nanogui: Fonts and keyboard support
Subject:
Re: Fonts and keyboard support
From:
Martin Jolicoeur ####@####.####
Date:
4 Jan 2000 15:17:04 -0000
Message-Id: <38720C52.DA8E9E07@visuaide.com>
Vidar,
Vidar Hokstad wrote:
> I'm currently working on a text area widget for NanoWidgets (we'll have to put
> a new release together fairly soon... There's several new widgets, and lots of
> bugfixes), and the font and keyboard handling issue popped up again.
>
> I'd like to know the status of any ongoing work on keyboard events and font
> handling before I start hacking on something myself.
>
Kool. We need internationalization too for our project. And we also need rotating
fonts (looks like we'll need vectorial fonts ... )
>
> - Support for font formats.
> For very small devices, compiled in fonts like it is currently would
> probably be enough. However for larger devices, support for many fonts
> and maybe even scalable fonts, may be requirement. I suggest making it
> easy to replace the font rendering at compile time. (We're considering
> adding support for Freetype, but realize that Freetype is *way* to big
> to just add to Nano-X without an option to turn it off).
>
I also considered Freetype (http://www.freetype.org) for truetype fonts and I am
concerned about the patent issue. Freetype is surely too big to be incuded in nanox
but could be supported through a wrapper as an external support library for those
who want. Also, I was wondering how easy it would be to strip it down to a mininum.
I considered T1lib
(http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ini/PEOPLE/rmz/t1lib/t1lib.html) for
adobe type 1 fonts (postscript fonts), it is somewhat smaller and don't seem to
have patent issue. Needs more study ...
>
> - Support for querying for fonts.
> We need a mechanism to obtain a list of fonts, their ID, and their most
> important attributes (at the very least size - including a value to signal
> "any" for freetype etc. -, and slant). Internally this could be handled
> by whatever font renderer is compiled in, for instance a Freetype wrapper,
> or a simple function that copies a compiled in structure when using compiled
> in fonts.
>
Agree.
We could join forces on the font issue, I'll see what I can do on my side
Martin Jolicoeur
GVT project
####@####.####
