Freetype-based text rendering and font discovery

[John W. Eaton]

On 23-Jun-2009, Michael Goffioul wrote:

| I'm currently working on text rendering in the OpenGL backend, using
| freetype. I have a draft working version that contains enough to render
| tick labels, axe labels and title, as well as basic text objects
| (90x-rotated, no background, no border, no margin...).
| 
| But before commiting anything, I'd also like to add basic font discovery
| mechanism. Up to now, I'm using an hardcoded TTF font that will only
| work under Windows.
| 
| I'm thinking about using fontconfig, which I guess is widely spread
| in UNIX environment. To make it simple in the configure script, I'm
| thinking about using pkg-config to find out fontconfig compilation flags.
| 
| Would these added dependencies be acceptable?

It's OK with me for Octave to depend directly on fontconfig.  Should
it be a hard requirement, or should we still allow the OpenGL graphics
code to be compiled if fontconfig is not found?

jwe