RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) (07/07/88)
Don't confuse current implementation with specification. (I know that traditionally there is no distinction in Unix, but humor me.) There is precious little in the X protocol spec that prohibits the use of non-bitmap, scalable fonts. It makes good sense to adopt a rational font naming scheme, that includes some "size" metric in the name, and have the server use (e.g.) an outline font internally and scale the font instances appropriately. From the application point of view, this isn't much different from using findfont/scalefont in PostScript. It doesn't give you PostScript's further font scaling via CTMs, but for many applications that kind of dynamics isn't essential. There is a wrinkle in deciding what ListFonts should return, but simple naming/property conventions can solve that; return the name of an instance of the font in some canonical unit, and identify (via the font name or a property of the font) that the font is scalable. If someone is interested in donating code ...
sayre@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Johannes Sayre) (07/09/88)
In articles <23656@bu-cs.BU.EDU> and
<19880707121730.7.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>, Barry Schein and Robert
Scheifler talk about the (non)-availability of scalable fonts in X.
I'm porting an application running on Sun 3's from SunCGI to X. The program
currently takes advantage of CGI's ability to scale fonts.
From the articles referred to above, and from reading the Xlib
manual, I gather that scalable fonts aren't available in the current MIT
X distribution.
Did I get this right, or am I missing something ?
As usual, any info will be greatly appreciated.
- Johannes