Type1 fonts & status of various backends

[Wim Oudshoorn]

This weekend I finally found some time to
experiment with T1lib. I have hacked
a version of xgps which uses Type 1 fonts in
order to get a feel for the font mechanism.

Well, using is a big word.
- It only uses 1 font
- does antialiasing
- scale to the right size.
- The Edit.app starts up and shows
        an acceptable screen.
BUT
- it is really very slow
- the code is really ugly, wrong, should deleted
        rather sooner than later etc...
So I see it as a proof of concept.

I am willing to take a shot at the
xgps - T1 font task, but before I really start
doing some work I would like some comments answers etc.

In no particular order:

1.  Is someone already implementing T1 font support?

2.  What is the goal of the various backends?
        As far as I know there are three (potential) backends for X11
        systems.

        - xgps   based on XLib. Does support minimal display
                postscript in order to make the AppKit part work.
                Most stable and easiest to get working right now.

        - xdps + DGS    Aims to be a complete ??
                replacement for the OpenStep display postscript system ??
                advantage that it should work on all X11 systems.               

        - xdps + DPS (commercial or XFree DPS)
                I have not really looked at the xdps but should probably
                work.  For what I have read about XFree DPS it seems a lot
                of work is required to make it usable.

        I especially wonder about xgps.  What is its aim?  I can not
        imagine that the goal is to be a complete DPS backend, that seems
        to much work and would duplicate a big part of the DGS system.
        
        The impression I get (confirmed by an old post in the archives) is
        that xgps is a temporarily solution.
        
        But if it is a temporarily solution is it worth it to put
        better font support in it?   At any rate, a
        description of the direction xgps is going is appreciated
        (and should perhaps be included in the documentation).

3.  During experimenting with my T1-xgps version (gstep-core-0.6.6)
        I noticed various problems with text drawing.
        - Text draw at the wrong position,
                I know my code is wrong, but even the X11 font support
                has this problem, although less noticable.
        - Scrolling in the Edit.app shows some refreshing problems.
        How is it in the latest versions?  If nothing is really changed
        I will try to make a nice bug report ;-) or fix it.

4.  If T1 font support is worth while, how about Truetype fonts
        with freetype2?  Because if we are going to use T1Lib I
        would want to keep the X11 font support.  And if
        we support two font engines, why not three?
        
        I am not really knowledgable about the differences between all
        these fonts.  So there could be lots of reasons not to include
        Truetype fonts?


5.  If I start implementing I will probably have a lot of questions
        about the desing of xgps and gui. (I have the nextstep docs
        at hand but that does not always help)  So is this the
        appriopriate forum?

6.  I got some crashes in the message lookup functions.  (sarray or
        something like that.)  During sending -release to my
        new FontInfo object.  If I put a dummy -release in the
        class it does not happen anymore.  Ideas anyone?


Greetings,
Wim Oudshoorn.