Re: [PATCH] Xft patch reloaded, #3

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 18:33:02 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull" said: Doesn't matter. Jim Gettys says this about Xft (http://freedesktop.org/~jg/roadmap.html) --- Xft2 provides a client-side font API for X applications. It uses Fontconfig to select fonts, Freetype 2 for rendering the fonts and the X protocol for drawing them on the screen. When available, Xft uses the Render extension to accelerate text drawing. When Render is not available, Xft uses the core protocol to draw client-side glyphs. This provides completely compatible support of client-side fonts for all X servers, enabling application developers the benefits of anti-aliased, subpixel decimated text on all X implementations. Xft1 is obsolete and should not be used; it did not provide AA text on old X servers, and combined this functionality with what is now Fontconfig, which has been made a separate library usable by all applications, not just X applications. Both Qt and GTK+ in versions since late 1992 have used Xft2 for their text rendering. Xft2 is stable, and now widely available and deployed on open source systems. --- So Render is nice but not required, and Xft can run on anything that provides the base X11 protocol. It's got one of the more sane font models around. Looks like a winner direction to me, as long as we're willing to make Xft a pre-req library (not like we don't have a bunch of those already).