Re: Type1 fonts & status of various backends

[Wim Oudshoorn]

Fred Kiefer wrote:

> I also think that xgps is a temporary solution, but one that will last
> for a whole while.
> Even if there will be a full working display postscript based solution,
> there will be the need for a GNUstep frontend to work with a X-Server
> that does not support display postscript.

Isn't xdps + DGS supposed to be the solution
for X-servers without display postscript?

Still I would say that a statement about the status of
the different backends could help.  I can see two directions

A. XGPS is really temporary.  So the only features that will be
        added are features needed to make basic AppKit usage work.
        There are two sources of improvements request:

        - reorganization of the GUI part needs functionality.
        (I would say that you do not want to limit the implementation
        of the GUI library by limitation in a temporarily backend)

        - user apps need some functionality.  The development of user
        apps should be encouraged and as long as xgps is
        the default backend we should consider implementing it.

B. XGPS is here to stay, but does not aim to have complete DPS
        support.  In this case I would like to have an idea
        which features it will and which features it won't
        support.
        
Approach B will lead to two versions of GNUstep. The complete with DPS
and the limited version without some features.
Although I do not like the idea of multiple versions it can have its
adavantages.
- The X11 version could be completed much earlier than
        the complete DGS version.
- Porting to other platforms (e.g. Win32) is much easier for the
        limited version.
                

> BTW some weeks ago Ralph Levine took over the maintenance of Ghostscript
> and one of the things he put on his working list was display postscript.

Now I am confused. Is this display postscript == DGS?

>
> There are a lot of problems left with text formatting and display in
> NSText and the layout mechanism. I am working on them, but there has
> been only little progress in that area. But still you could check with
> the latest CVS version. If the problem is still there, fix it in that
> code.

Well CVS is a problem.  I do not have Internet access at home for
some time.  (Depends on how fast I can buy a house move into it)
And the company I work for has a firewall which blocks CVS access.

> I based the font support for xgps on the X-Server, so that if there is a
> Postscript module loaded (or a Truetype module) all the fonts provided
> by that, are supplied to GNUstep.  Of course, we don't get all the
> specific information from that fonts, only what the X-Server hands on,
> but we get what we currently need. There is this great FreeType project
> (htttp://www.freetype.org) that will provide access to different fonts
> for all applications (An older version is included in XFree 4.0).
> Perhaps we could use their interface for all the specialized font
> support. For xgps I think that our current solution will be good enough
> until we switch over to use Pango (htttp://www.pango.org) in a few
> years.

I am a little confused. The X-Server font support is a nice way to
have a temporary solution.  But I am not quite sure where Pango
fits in.  The goal should be to make applications independent on
the backend choosen.   Therefore the layout of the text should
also be independent of the backend and because DPS is the standard
all fonts should be rendered as if they are postscript fonts.
At least the printing facilities would like to have postscript fonts.
How does Pango going to handle that?

> A better Postscript support will also be needed for GNUstep as a whole.
> Currently we have split up the backend on that line, ...
Which line are you talking about?

> but we will need
> Postscript for printing in all the GUI code. Some minimal Postscript
> support (not Display Postscript, no windows interaction) will be needed
> for that. So any work you do will benefit all backends.

I have not thought about printing at all, but I probably should.
I will start reading the NextStep display postscript and the
postscript reference manual.

> The GNUStep Developer mailing list <gnustep-dev@gnu.org> will be more
> appropriate for those questions.

Well I am not a member (yet).

Greetings,
Wim Oudshoorn.