Re: [ft-devel] Contribution to freetype

[Werner LEMBERG]

> For the project, I am thinking of the following approach: I will
> have to modify the internal freetype files which provide the support
> to the new font format drivers.

Well, most of the time it will be rather `add new header files'.
Modifications to other header files will (hopefully!) be minor only.

> Further, I will have to implement new drivers for gf, pk, tfm and vf
> font formats for freetype.

Yep.

> For the drivers I will take reference from the available drivers in
> VFlib and implement them for freetype on the lines of already
> available bdf font format driver.

Exactly.  The BDF, PCF, and Winfnt modules can serve as examples how
bitmap drivers work, and the Type1 module shows how to `attach' a
metric file to a font.

> I recognize that for the `vf` font format support it is tagged as
> 'hard' and I fear I may have missed things that might make it more
> difficult than I imagined.

The difficulty is not adding support for the VF format itself but to
find a good API that is generic enough for other purposes, too.  I'm
thinking of handling files like Microsoft's
`GlobalSerif.CompositeFont'.  Apple and Android provide similar
concepts.  It's probably not the job of FreeType to digest such
composite fonts by itself (you'll need an external XML interpreter);
however, it would be very helpful if we have a foundation to
provide easy support for such composite fonts.


    Werner