Re: [ft-devel] On the impact of installing the next FreeType release on a typical Unix distribution

[david turner]

> > It'd be much better if you could find a way to embedded the FreeType 
> > functionality within
> > the FontForge sources directly, instead on relying on something so fragile.
> >     
> We discussed this before. It would divorce ff from freetype fixes which
> to me is far worse.
>   
If that's the only point, what about organizing the FreeType sources so 
as to be able to
compile the TrueType bytecode interpreter as a standalone library as well ?

In this scheme, the FontForge sources would directly include the 
FreeType ones, but
the end result would end up statically compiled within the FontForge 
executable (or in
a plugin, if you have problems with the patent issues). you wouldn't 
depend on a
special freetype library instance being installed on your system.

Another option is simply to ship a special version statically linked to 
FontForge.

I still don't understand why you absolutely want the ability to 
dynamically peek into the
internals of the libfreetype installed on the system, especially since 
it will not have the
bytecode interpreter on most distros anyway...

Hope this helps,

- David

> > Please understand that we don't want to maintain _that_ level of 
> > backwards compatibility.
> >     
> I feel this is something where >I< maintain the compatibility, not you.
> I just don't want a situation where I can't hack around things.
>
> I think we have different goals... you want to make production software,
> while I just want something that can be made to work...
>
>
>   

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