Hopefully this message will get to all of those concerned about
Type 1 Vs. TrueType fonts in AbiWord. The reason we're using
Type 1 fonts is twofold:
- They render fast. The X server does the rendering (and even though
it's into a bitmap with a depth of 1-bit), it's much, much faster
than my simple tests at client side rendering with type1lib. I'm
sure document rendering could be improved by a word cache or
other small speedups, but the difference in speeds was large
enough to be discouraging.
- Type 1 fonts go into PostScript very easily--in fact, you simply
insert them as resources at the top of the stream and call on
them later to draw with. TrueType fonts don't do this.
I took a look at the FreeType project and the things they were
doing with TrueType font rendering, and it looked very nice.
Unfortunately, they appeared to be using a license incompatible
with ours (GPL). I haven't talked to them about this, nor am
I a lawyer, but we can't waiver on this point. If we're only
using it as a library (no code-sharing), I think we're clear
but I'll have to check.
Right now I'm awaiting what comes of gnome-text, the layout/display/
printing solution that may make its way into GTK proper. They're
doing really cool things with fonts. A draft of the design
is at http://www.levien.com/gnome/print-arch.html, and the
architects are speaking at Linux Expo today (Thursday, August
12).
... having said all this, we're always open to patches.
If someone wants to do client side rendering (for Unix,
which would entail modifying GR_UnixGraphics's font loading
and text drawing), change the Unix font init stuff to use FreeType,
etc., I'll be glad to change my opinion on things. :)
-- Shaw Terwilliger