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

[Paul Kelly]

On Tue, 8 May 2007, Hamish wrote:

> Paul Kelly wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> why do the stroke fonts need to be in a *cap file at all? Their presence
> is not volatile, and their only "tag" is that they are stroke fonts.
> "d.font -l" already works without adding them, I fear it would just be
> uneeded clutter.

I was just thinking that it would be clear to the user where all the 
available fonts were coming from and that he/she (or the package 
maintainer?) could re-arrange the order that stroke and freetype fonts 
were listed in, or even remove some of them just by editing the 
freetypecap/fontcap/fontlist file. But now I see that that conflicts with 
the idea that the stroke fonts are always guaranteed to be there in every 
GRASS installation, so perhaps that's not a good idea after all.

Another point is that currently if a specified font is not an absolute 
path and can't be found in freetypecap, the driver code assumes it is a 
stroke font and goes looking for it in the $GISBASE/fonts directory. If 
all font names had to be in the font list file it would enable clearer 
error reporting - "xxxx not found in font list file" rather than failing 
at a later stage with "can't open file $GISBASE/fonts/xxxx.hmp".

Well that was my reasoning anyway but I see it's not a clearcut decision.

Paul