Re: [Devel] Java port of FreeType

[David Turner]

Hi John,

John Leuner a écrit :
> 
> Hello all
> 
> I am interested in doing a port of freetype 2 to Java.
>
Do you want to provide Java bindings for the FreeType 2 API or
instead "rewrite" the engine in Java ??

In the latter case, I believe that you'd probably better rewrite
the engine completely, for at least two reasons:

  - its internal design tends to change more or less often, when
    we add features, modules or simply cleanup some internal thingies.
    it's also an order of magnitude more complex than FreeType 1,
    believe me.. !!

  - the engine has been written in C, and I'm pretty confident that
    copying it straight into a Java program is going to create a few
    problems..


> I have been in touch with Roland Paterson who did a port of freetype 1 at:
> 
> http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/gap59/freetype.shtml
> 
> So far I have read the glyph conventions guide and most of the other docs, 
> but I can't see a porter's guide anywhere.
>
Actually, there isn't any porter's guide.. It would only contain information
specific to how to provide custom memory managers and input streams anyway,
since the library doesn't depend on system-specific features.. and people
already do this with the documentation found in the API reference..

What you need is something different, i.e. a complete description of the
library's internals, and I'm sorry to say that I have not the time to complete
the "FreeType internals" documentation..

You'll thus need to read the whole code and try to understand it to get
a better idea. Hopefully, the code isn't too badly written and should be
relatively easy to grok..
 
> Would it be possible for me to use the FreeType CVS repository for this 
> development, or should I start a new project?
>
We could provide you some space on our repository if you want, but I'll
only do that if you guarantee your long-term support for this project.

Otherwise, you could create a "freetype-java" project on SourceForge and
use the capabilities found there to begin experimenting with the idea
(and we could still create a FreeType CVS module for it once it matures
enough and you feel commited to it..)

In all cases, we're currently switching the server, so CVS commits and
changes are disabled until next week.

> Is there anyone who would like to help with this effort?
>
We can help if you want some help on writing some JNI wrapper for the
library. As for a complete rewrite, it's a very time-consuming task,
with little direct benefits to us for the moment, which is why you'll
probably not find support from the core developers..

However, that doesn't mean that you couldn't find someone interested
in helping you on this list..


Good luck :o),

Regards,

- David