Re: Gnome text subsystems

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ariman ee>]

On 1 Jun 2000, Owen Taylor wrote:

> There are three reasonable ways of rendering:
> 
>  - Rendering with the existing X font model, because, especially for non-Western
>    languages, in many cases, bitmap fonts are all people have.
>  - Rendering client side to get high-quality WYSIWYG
>  - Fixing the X font model
> 
> Trying to pretend to combine these by downloading bitmaps via XFS or something
> gets you nowhere.

Why not?
Unless next generation X font system (it will certainly take much time to
come out, then much time to spread wide) will include all and every font
properties, needed for fine typography, I see good reasons for separate
Gnome font system too.

> And we should be working on fixing the X model. Miguel seems to think we
> can have GNOME fonts and X will just go away. Sorry, Miguel, but if you
> want a frame buffer, X is lousy framebuffer. We need to work with X
> on this issue, because:
> 
>  - We'll get better results. Client-side rendering is sometimes as efficient
>    as server side rendering, and sometimes much worse.

And sometimes much more efficent ;)

> 
>  - There are competent people out there ready to work on the X font problem.
>    We shouldn't divide efforts.
> 
>  - GNOME is not the world under Linux. Everybody uses non-GNOME programs, and
>    everybody will continue to use non-GNOME programs. 

There is one point agains using X fonts too:

- GNOME is not unseparately bound to X.

Also - I do not think, X should be concerned with printing. So probably X
font system also shouldn't. But the one of Gnome should.

Lauris