Re: [dev] freetype2/fc pain

From: Manu Raster <manu.raster_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2018 13:27:08 +0200

Hiltjo Posthuma <hiltjo_AT_codemadness.org> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 09:15:55AM +0200, Silvan Jegen wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 8:32 AM Eric Pruitt <eric.pruitt_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 11:19:46PM -0700, AR Garbe wrote:
>> > > On 23 September 2018 at 11:56, Eric Pruitt <eric.pruitt_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > > It's not just about Emoji or anti-aliasing. If you work with languages
>> > > > that use non-Latin characters, support for fallback fonts is a must.
>> > >
>> > > Well, are you using st with glyphs that require fallback fonts?
>> > > I wonder if at suckless we should aim for the general purpose.
>> >
>> > Yes, st's fallback font support is the main reason I began to use it. I
>> > use st and dwm with Japanese and Chinese text almost every single day.
>>
>> Just chiming in to say that I am using st with Japanese/Chinese fonts every
>> day as well.
>>
>> I don't think we should throw out support for a feature that more than a billion
>> people on the planet rely on. That doesn't mean that we can't rethink how we
>> go about supporting that feature though.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Silvan
>>
>
> I agree its useful. (Complex) fall-back font support has been on my mind also.
> An idea could be of instead of supporting fallback fonts we could write some
> font merge script (pre-runtime).

Very good! That's where the problem should be addressed. Solving font
problems pre-runtime at font-file level saves many lines of code.

Normally, in non-asian setups only a fraction of the glyphs beyond
ascii are used at a time and those few can easily be merged in
pre-runtime if not already present e.g. some emojis.

It also keeps font files small and avoids loading many megabytes of
unneeded glyphs into memory.

Regards,

Manu
Received on Mon Sep 24 2018 - 13:27:08 CEST