Re: [ft-devel] Make FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden standard API?

[mpsuzuki]

Hi

On Thu, 12 May 2005 23:44:11 +0800
Chia I Wu <address@hidden> wrote:
>As fontconfig and xft already have the code to "embolden" and rely on
>FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden to do the real job, I think FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden
>should be made standard API. This is an important feature for Chinese
>(maybe also Japanese and Korean) users, as most Chinese fonts don't have
>a real bold style.
>
>What do you think?

I'm unfamiliar with this API and never checked the bolden result in
detail, could you show some demo program?

As you pointed out, most CJK font family does not provide "bold" style.
I think "weight" (XXX-Light, XXX-Medium, XXX-Heavy etc) - may take
similar role of it in the typographical viewpoint. But, most personal
computers are shipped with only 1 or 2 fonts for each CJK scripts,
and synthesized "bold" is often used in documents generated by PC.

Considering there is such root of embolding request, I wonder whether
FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden() API is already enough for the purpose. It does
not receive much parameters to control embolding (am I misunderstanding?).
I'm afraid several control parameters are requested in future, for example:

* strength to embolding
* switch to enable/disable changing glyph metrics in embolding
* switch to enable/disable embolding of bitmap font
* choosing embolding algorithm

How do you think of?

Regards,
mpsuzuki