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

[Michael Barton]

On 5/7/07 7:32 AM, "Glynn Clements" <glynn at gclements.plus.com> wrote:

> 
> Paul Kelly wrote:

...

>> OK well it doesn't work on Windows anyway. The device number corresponds
>> to the drive letter but it appears the inode number is always 0. So I
>> suppose we can just keep the string comparison of the directory names. Or
>> remove the option of specifying the full path to a GRASS stroke font - I
>> generally feel unhappy with the idea of removing functionality but maybe
>> it is the best option here?
> 
> I think so.
> 
> Allowing a full path is exposing an implementation detail, it isn't
> sufficient for files containing multiple faces, and it may cause
> problems with future development.
> 
> I would rather just have fonts selected by an abstract identifier.
> 

Could this be the kind of font specification used in native font selection
dialogs for wxPython and TclTk? They *appear* to be quite similar in the way
they specify fonts. But I still have found no way to get back to original
font files from these specifications, suggesting that it happens somewhere
at the system level. If we could somehow tap into that, it could ultimately
make life easier for cross-platform font selection.

...
>> 
>> OK. Well here is my current proposal, which can be easily added to both
>> d.font and libdriver: dynamically generate the format conversion string
>> (containing either a : or ; as separator) based on the relative position
>> of : and ; characters in the first line of the file that contains either
>> of them.
>> The code looks like below; it is complicated but I can't see how to make
>> it simpler without losing backwards compatibility. I'm not quite happy
>> enough with it to commit it yet. It can be easily included in both d.font
>> and libdriver as-is, though.
> 
> 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.

Then I'm not going to worry about implementing a different way of selecting
fonts that uses freetypecap in the TclTk GUI at the moment. It is working OK
now, so I'll leave well enough alone until this gets sorted out further.

But it *is* really nice to see this discussion over improvements in how to
specify display fonts in GRASS. It makes an enormous impact on the
professional look of GRASS output, not to mention its readability in
presentations. Thanks much guys.

Michael

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton