[ft-devel] severe unpatented hinting problem

[Werner LEMBERG]

Folks,


the current CVS code of FreeType contains the following #if
clause as the central part of handling unpatented hinting:

  in ttobjs.c:

    #if defined( TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING    ) && \
        !defined( TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER )
    ...

However, the documentation of TT_CONFIG_UNPATENTED_HINTING says:

  Define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING (in addition to
  TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER) to compile the unpatented
  work-around hinting system.

Note the `in addition'.  This is exactly the opposite of what the code
does.  Now the question: Shall we update the documentation to follow
the code, or fix the code so that it follows the documentation?

I favour the latter (which additionally makes more sense for me
because you have to use the bytecode interpreter even for unpatented
hinting).

To make things even more confusing we have

  /* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */
  #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING

in the default ftoption.h file -- something which shouldn't happen if
you strictly follow the documentation...  Note that if you compile the
CVS version of FreeType out of the box, you get the right unpatented
hinting, but as soon as you start reading the docs you'll get slightly
irritated :-)

Since I've never used the unpatented hinting stuff by myself (except
for very superficial testing), I'm not sure whether the documentation
was wrong before.

Comments, please!


     Werner