Re: [ft] problem with "MS Sans Serif" font

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> Don't mix up pixel size (which is absolute) and point size (which
>> is relative to the selected DPI value).  11pt for 72dpi means a
>> glyph height of 11 pixels; 11pt for 96dpi, however, is 15 pixels
>> (rounded), and this size isn't available in the font.  At 72dpi,
>> the font contains faces for 11pt, 13pt, 16pt, 19pt, 24pt, and 32pt.
>> At 96dpi, you get faces for 8pt, 10pt, 12pt, 14pt, 18pt, and 24pt.
> 
> Understood.  So is ftview only able to show the first font face in
> the file?

Well, there is no command line option to directly select the face (you
are welcome to add it).  Instead, you have to press the `n' key
repeatedly in the ftview window to walk over all available faces.

>> If you select a font size in WordPad which is not in the font
>> (e.g. 11pt at 96dpi), you either get glyphs from a different,
>> scalable font, or Windows does indeed apply scaling to a bitmap
>> font which should produce horrible optical results.
> 
> Is there any way to tell FreeType to scale if necessary to get the
> size I'm asking for?

No.  FreeType doesn't scale bitmap fonts.

> The bottom line is that we want to allow the user to pick a font and
> have it work.  If it doesn't look as good, then they can decide to
> pick something else.  But we want to still be able to render the
> requested face at the requested size.

I suggest to disable bitmap fonts altogether since their use is very
limited; IMHO they only make sense as console fonts.  Use the
FT_IS_SCALABLE macro to check for that.


    Werner