Re: [dev] freetype2/fc pain

From: Eon S. Jeon <esjeon_AT_hyunmu.am>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:17:51 +0600

> On 25 Sep 2018, at 00:12, Manu Raster <manu.raster_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Eon S. Jeon" <esjeon_AT_hyunmu.am> writes:
>
>>>> Hiltjo Posthuma <hiltjo_AT_codemadness.org> writes:
>
>>>> 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.
>>
>> Hello, Manu.
>
> Greetings Eon,
>
>> Sorry, but merging font is not a good option.
>
> For only a couple of characters or a set of new emojis, imo it
> is. Normally the goal is just to fill occasional gaps in running
> text. Whenever a tofu is rendered, the tofu's codepoint appends a file
> which becomes the not too long and complex list of missing glyphs. To be
> acquired by the user, of course.

Then every tofu means users must restart st to see the actual character, losing all states in the process. It might be simple but not sensible.

>> Each font contains settings like height, padding and hinting
>> parameters, which are optimized for its glyphs by designers. So,
>> merging fonts (or importing glyphs from other fonts) likely to cause
>> character misalignment and hinting problems, especially when merging
>> fonts of different languages.
>
> This is true for fonts for typesetting books but system fonts used to be
> simple bitmap definitions of fixed measures. If we confine the user to
> languages in phonetic writing systems in a latin-based script such as
> english we are well off. Mixing radically different languages and
> writing systems in one program is never needed but introduces a lot of
> complexity (fallback, tables, caching, xml) and multiple and full blown
> font files.


I use all of CJK and am not the only one who use non-Latin language in terminal. In the past, I too assumed I would use only English on terminal, but I cannot control what other people send to me. It is really stupid if I have to spin up xterm occasionally just to read those things.
Received on Tue Sep 25 2018 - 16:17:51 CEST