Re: Language Setup Document (Re: Text drawing bug - gaps after 16th character ...)

[Kazunobu Kuriyama]

Fred Kiefer wrote:

> Kazunobu Kuriyama wrote:
>
> > Yen-Ju Chen wrote:
> >
> > > The part of Xlib probably is out of date. I never touch Xlib backend 
> > > since then
> > It's absolutely out of date.  Rather, that part of the article is 
> > quite harmful becuase
> > the current implementation of the xlib backend doesn't support i18n 
> > at all.
>
>
> Could you please add a bit more detail to this claim, that the xlib 
> backend doesn`t support internationalisation at all? 

The current implementation of XGFont.m uses only XDrawString to draw 
literal strings on the screen.
Hence no one can expect it to work for all possible byte strings of type 
NSGlyph*.  In other words,
it works fine only for single byte charaters.  (This may be a subtle 
point for those who exclusively
use single byte characters.)

> As far as I am aware from your mails to the GNUstep mailing lists, the 
> only thing that did not work for you was the problem with scaled fonts 
> having a gap after 16 characters. I am not even sure if this problem 
> prevailed for the xlib backend, when you did switch on the XFT fonts.

Not exactly.  That was the problem of Pete French. At that time, I 
thought the problem I had was relevant
to his problem.  So I posted some emails in the thread in hope of that 
they might be helpful for tracking
down the bug.  In the emails I pointed out misalignment of strings, 
i.e., missing of the last character of
a string and overlapping of some characters in a string. I also attached 
a screenshot of misalignment
strings with an email; some people confirmed it with their eyes.

As for XFT fonts, I'm completely at a loss how to reply to you.  I 
simply sent my report on what I did
and what I saw.  Moreover, why should I explain more on the behavior of 
the art backend to discuss the
xlib backend's bug?  Remember, I've been talking about the bug of xlib, 
not how to use art.  Who can take
responsibility of someone's misunderstanding?

> You may not have noticed, but some of us did put quite a deal of work 
> into GNUstep and a statement like this makes me just think that it may 
> have been not worthwhile. If people come up to GNUstep and expect 
> everything to work out of the box as they would like to have it, they 
> are surely at the wrong place. At least still at the moment.
>
> Fred 

Could you please take a look at XGFont.m again and see if it fully 
supports i18n or not.
I think you could have done something else before jumping into such an 
irrelevant conclusion
if you had took such a tiny trouble.

- KK