[GRASS-dev] iconv a required dependency for using Freetype?

[Paul Kelly]

On Mon, 7 May 2007, Glynn Clements wrote:

> Here's my proposal: don't bother maintaining compatibility with the
> current freetypecap format or the ability to select fonts by absolute
> path. Both of those were made up on the spot without any real
> consideration.

So what about having a totally new file, let's call it fontcap - different 
name to make it clear there is no backwards compatiblity. It could include 
the stroke fonts as well as freetype-compatible fonts, with a field to 
indicate whether the font is stroke or freetype, also absolute filename, 
index within the file, perhaps a field for a descriptive/long name too.

I wonder if something like this is what Michael had in mind when we 
started this whole discussion - a simple list of all the avaiable fonts 
that could be offered to the user to choose from through the GUI?

It would be generated automatically on compilation/installation and then 
the user could further edit it to add to / strip it down if required.
Wolf said he was interested in writing something to automatically extract 
information from font files on the system - maybe what he comes up with 
can be used to generate this fontcap file. And then once we're finished 
GRASS_FONT can only contain a font id string from this file - nothing else 
is accepted. Does that sound like it might be workable?