Re: What backend should be the default now on -nix?

[Adrian Robert]

On Oct 27, 2004, at 6:46 AM, Nicolas Roard wrote:
> For me, the only real problem with backart, is the fact that it uses 
> its own font system. I personally like it and found it better; but I 
> understand very well that it could be
> held against it -- and in a non "gnustep os" (ie, not something 
> dedicated to gnustep... that is... everywhere at the moment..) that's 
> probably a problem :-)
> The solution would be ideally to use fontconfig in addition to the 
> nfont system...

For most, this objection would probably end if a decent package of 
fonts were included with the back-end (instead of as a separate 
download).  Is there some obstacle to this, like there are lots of 
systems out there with nfonts already installed that this would mess 
up?  If so, perhaps a script could be written to detect this, and 
install only if needed.  Also, if there is a way to convert or wrap 
existing fonts, either Type 1 from X, TrueType from Windows, or 
whatever Ghostscript uses, to the nfont system, a script could be 
included to do this.  For example, the Pstill PDF distiller supports 
this with Type 1 and Ghostscript fonts, and it's also possible to get X 
itself to use Windows TrueType fonts.  If this is possible for nfont, 
it would be best to have some scripts that initiate this (and can 
update it) on install/upgrade, since the time to learn how to do it and 
then do it manually will prevent many from doing it at all.

The current state of the "easy" Art font install leaves you with 
something like 4 different fonts, which is OK for developers and casual 
users, but not sufficient for serious use.

On the Xlib back end, is there an obstacle to setting anti-aliased 
fonts on by default?  I personally only noticed this capability after 
months, and don't imagine this is that unusual among general users.  
Ideally, anti-alias should default to ON, but the code should 
autodetect if libfreetype is absent in in this case fall back to 
non-antialiased.

(I apologize if some of this was redundant with previous posts but 
thought the points were worth emphasizing.)