Huw D M Davies wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 08, 2000 at 06:09:42PM -0700, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> > Another problem with the patch is that it adds dependencies between
> > gdi, wineps and winspool, and this is Not Good(tm). Inter-dll calls
> > are only allowed to call functions exported in the spec file; the APS
> > functionality should be exposed through the standard Windows APIs.
>
> Yes, this is the reason why I haven't merged this code from the Corel
> tree myself. It's not quite as hard to unravel as the FontTastic
> stuff though...
I'm not sure that it's really worth trying to integrate the FontTastic
changes into the mainline winehq tree - the only way to solve the inter-dll
calling issue here is to implement the font apis from the ddk, and make
both the ps driver and the x11 driver use those apis. Trying to shoehorn
the FontTastic changes into that approach will be painful at best - since
it's using X Font APIs to enumerate the available fonts, it's going to be
hard to avoid crossing dll boundaries from the PS side to the X side.
Furthermore, one of the interesting things that came out at the recent
VA Printing Summit was the fact that the new X Rendering Model under
development totally throws out all the existing X font APIs. Basically,
the X guys concluded that they'd much rather have the client end deal
with most font issues. All the new server is going to know how to do is
to composite pre-rasterized glyphs on screen. The client end will have
to supply the server with the rasterized glyphs, and there will be some
kind of communications channel that allows the server to make intelligent
caching decisions.
Since FreeType already provides a nice client API, it's probably going
to become the de-facto way to render text. It's a good choice for WINE
use because it lets us avoid the X-Driver/PS-Driver Inter-DLL calling
problem (ie we wouldn't *have* to implement the ddk font apis).
Of course there's always the FreeType patent issue to consider as well,
but they are looking into using autohinting to get around that (this
theoretically should result in similar quality glyph rasterization,
without any question of running up against the Apple hinting patent).
Of course, with antialiased rendering, small text looks pretty good
even unhinted in my experience.
-Gav
--
Gavriel State
CEO
TransGaming Technologies
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
