Re: [Devel] Help me understand this... I'm loosing my sanity. Please.

[Anthony Fok]

Hello all,

On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 06:33:19PM +0200, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 April 2003 18:28, Billy Biggs wrote:
> > > But on debian, there is no /usr/include/freetype2!
> > >
> > > But I have installed libfreetype6_2.1.4-1_i386.deb ...
> >
> >   You did not install the development package:
> >
> >   apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
> 
> Thank you! THen, yes, debian seems to have enabled the bytecode
> interpreter.

Sorry, I am late in joining this discussion, esp. that I am the main
culprit of the problem that Maurizio is experiencing.  I turned on the
bytecode interpreter for Debian.  And as others have mentioned, the
Luxi fonts bundled in XFree86 aren't well hinted (or instructed).
If you don't mind non-free (non-libre) fonts, you could try the
Microsoft Core Web fonts that used to be available as free (gratis)
download.  They are beautiful with the bytecode interpreter on.
Of course, the autohinter is also great with these fonts.

I did try to turn the bytecode interpreter off for some time, but
immediately received a bunch of bug reports--some complain that the
fonts were too fuzzy, or that there was colour fringes, or that MingLiU
became unusable.  Also, for CJK users, with the auto-hinter on, the
width of supposedly monospace CJK characters become non-constant.

So yes, whichever way I choose, I'll get users filing bug reports
complaining.  My feelings are equally divided.

freetype-2.1.4 has dealt with most of these problems, so I'll probably try to
release a non-bytecode interpreted (or the upcoming unpatented bytecode
interpreter) version again to "test the water".

Eventually, I will likely make a separate package, one with bytecode
interpreter on and one without.

If you prefer, instead of building from the upstream tarball yourself, you
could also "apt-get source freetype", and then modify
freetype-2.1.4/debian/rules and change "use_bytecode = yes" to "use_bytecode
= no", run "dch -i" to increment the version number, and run "debuild",
and install the resulting *.deb files.  That would do the trick too.

Regards,

Anthony

-- 
Anthony Fok Tung-Ling
ThizLinux Laboratory   <address@hidden> http://www.thizlinux.com/
Debian Chinese Project <address@hidden>       http://www.debian.org/intl/zh/
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