Fonts and Fedora

[Jerry James]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Aidan Kehoe <kehoea at parhasard.net> wrote:
> I can’t commit to doing any work on this, but I can probably answer more
> questions than most.

I understand.  Thanks.  I probably will pester you with questions.  In
the short term, though, I don't think I have much choice but to either
break X-Symbol or remove it entirely from the Fedora package.

> Suggestion on this point: Update the GTK port to GTK-2 and Pango, abandoning
> the half-hearted “we’ll do our own buffer-text fonts, thanks” approach of
> the GTK-1 port, and, in passing, getting robust for internationalisation
> with Xft fonts with bidi and shaping. I really don’t buy the argument that
> redisplay *needs* to have more detailed access to the window-system
> structures than Pango offers, given that this XEmacs outputs bidi to this
> PuTTY *xterm-compatible terminal emulator* fine.
>
> That’s a lot of work. But, in the absence of a GTK-2 plus Pango port, we
> still need to give our *own* Xft port much better non-ASCII support, and
> this would not be any less work, as far as I can see.

Well, in addition to knowing nothing about fonts, I also know nothing
about GTK-1, GTK-2, or Pango.  So I'll get right to work. :-)

> In my suggested approach above, we’d point distributions like that to the
> GTK port, and keep the Xt port around for paradoxically-clean-shaven bearded
> old-timers like you and me if it’s still actually impossible to open frames
> on two devices at the same time under GTK.

Hey, I'll have you know that I haven't shaved since Sunday morning!

> I’m sorry I don’t have a suggestion that involves any less work. :-/

I appreciate the feedback.
-- 
Jerry "I'm pretty sure I'd grow something resembling a beard eventually" James
http://www.jamezone.org/