Re: A DVI viewer with freetype2

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Doing this will make people in CJK countries not very happy since
> > you remove CJK support...
> 
> I don't get it. It would remove CJK support only until someone writes
> a CJK module for freetype2.

There never will be a `CJK module' for freetype2.  VFlib provides an
additional layer to support CJK subfonts as needed by TeX.

> In my opinion, a font library should be one consistent piece of
> software. VFlib is a good solution while we don't have that, but VFlib
> is a conglomerate of a bunch of font libraries. Although the external
> API is consistent, the internals have to be bloated in order to cope
> with all differences between the parts. Also, it encourages divided
> effort for the same task - after all, there are multiple rendering
> engines (freetype1, t1lib, ...), so that if t1lib comes up with a
> better renderer, freetype1 doesn't make use of that, and as a result
> different fonts are rendered with different quality. 
> 
> Now that freetype2 will accept any font format I see no reason for
> VFlib anymore. The amount of work put into VFlib is huge, and I admire
> who did it being a programmer myself.  But I guess work will be more
> fruitful if it is redirected to new modules for freetype2.

As said above VFlib provides some more functionality, especially for
CJK fonts) which should not be in FT2.  I fully agree that adding more
font drivers to FT2 is a better solution than having many different
font drivers in VFlib (volunteers! volunteers!), but it is a
time-consuming task to do that.


    Werner