Re: [ft] Can Freetype process a glyph file directly

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Now what i want is to use, MF program instead of Mftrace to process
> METAFONT using FreeType. MF program takes a .mf file as input and
> returns a .tfm and .gf file. This .gf file is then converted using
> GFtoPK or GFtoDVI into .pk or .dvi files respectively and then can
> be used for displaying.
> 
> So, my question is if i have a .GF or .glif file is it possible to
> process it using FreeType?  Can i use FT_Load_Glyph() or any other
> function to directly input such information.

FreeType does neither support .gf nor .pk files.  Similarly, it
doesn't support the .glif format.

However, there exists the old VFlib library (from KAKUGAWA Hirotsugu)

  http://www-masu.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/~kakugawa/TeX-Guy/dl.html

that comes with support for .gf, .pk, and some other TeX-related
formats.  Recently, its author has updated the license statements (on
request) to be compatible with FreeType, so feel free to contribute
some new FreeType modules for GF, PK, and probably VF also based on
this code :-)

Adding support for .glif is more complicated – you need an XML parser.
I certainly won't add code to FreeType to parse XML files.  Instead, I
would like to *link* to a suitable XML parsing library – eventually it
is planned to support the `SVG' OpenType table, and SVG files are in
XML format also.  Ideas how to do so are highly welcomed.


    Werner