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

[Paul Kelly]

On Mon, 7 May 2007, Michael Barton wrote:

> 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.

If we remove the ability to set a Freetype-compatible font through the 
GRASS_FONT env var by specifying it's full filename, then it will no 
longer work though. Just thinking - I don't see any reason why the font 
selection dialog can not just take the list of font options from
"d.font -l" and present this list in a drop down selection box to the 
user. It includes the stroke fonts and the Truetype etc. fonts available 
in freetypecap (or wherever they will be listed in the future), all in one 
list.

I was thinking perhaps you didn't want to have to rely on users having 
updated their freetypecap file with fonts on the system, and that is why 
you've offered the possiblity of choosing Freetype-compatible fonts 
directly from the directory most of them are typically stored in on the 
platform gis.m is running on? That would seem to be no longer relevant now 
that the freetypecap file (and in future, its replacement) are 
automatically generated to contain the fonts available on the system, i.e. 
the list from "d.font -l" is now more reliable as an indicator of all 
possible font choices - and simplifies things too as it doesn't need a 
separate choice/browsing mode for stroke and freetype fonts.

In that sense, using the d.font -l output directly will be I suppose more 
future-proof (I'm thinking of the new Python GUI too) than parsing 
freetypecap directly.

Paul