Re: Question regarding fontforge not compatible with ppc64le architecture and spin requests

Hi Amit, Hi Deepak,
I believe George is enjoying some time-off, but may also be quietly watching 
the current FontForge build progress.
Maybe we are doing good by his metrics, maybe not.
Hopefully we are.

The last FontForge build you refer to, 20120731-b which is located on 
sourceforge has been left as-is. Also, there is only about 3 people with 
any access to the sourceforge website at this point, maybe 2 or 1. We leave 
it as it is.

Since about 20120731, we duplicated FontForge and copied it to github.
The FontForge copy located on github has well over 1000 fixes, patches, 
updates, improvements, added since 20120731-b.

If you are interested in getting FontForge working, the github version is 
the version you will want to be interested in helping fix and improve.

It is located here: https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge


Before you build FontForge, I ask if you can build 2 libraries which 
FontForge uses to it's advantage. When you build FontForge, the build 
system should also seek-out and take advantage of these libraries.

Start with the simpler library, "libuninameslist", located here:
https://github.com/fontforge/libuninameslist

This is a static library containing Unicode definitions based on the current 
Unicode NameList table, version 6.3. There will likely be an updated 
version coming this year when unicode.org updates their definitions.

If you use the master located on github, you will need to build using the 
autoconf tools, such as:
autoreconf -i
automake --foreign -Wall
./configure
make
sudo make install

For additional resources that may help you with library libuninameslist, 
you can check for version 20130501 located here:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/libu/libuninameslist.html
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libuninameslist
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/libuninameslist/


The second library of interest, is libspiro, located here:
https://github.com/fontforge/libspiro

This library may probably be a bit more difficult for you to get working, but 
if you succeed in running 'make check', then you will have additional 
confidence that it will work correctly with FontForge, plus, it is also used 
as a subset of 'gegl' if you have/use that. I am unaware of other programs 
that use it, but it is available for other programs to make use of it.

If you use the master located on github, you will need to build using the 
autoconf tools, such as:
autoreconf -i
automake --foreign -Wall
./configure
make
make check
sudo make install

For additional resources that might help, you may want to check:
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/libspiro/
https://codeclimate.com/github/mxcl/homebrew/Libspiro


Both libraries above are backwards compatible and should work with 
FontForge 20120731-b and/or other code.

If the make tools for the ppc64le are not sufficiently updated to use the 
autoconf tools, you can use another computer such as a desktop PC to build 
a distributable package for both libraries above.

For libuninameslist, you can use:
git clone https://github.com/fontforge/libuninameslist.git ~/lib1
cd ~/lib1
rm -fR .git
autoreconf -i
automake --foreign -Wall
./configure
make dist

inside the directory, you will find a tar.gz which you can transfer to the 
ppc64le, and on the ppc64le, you can use the tar.gz file with:
./configure
make
sudo make install

Same for libspiro...
git clone https://github.com/fontforge/libspiro.git ~/lib2
cd ~/lib2
rm -fR .git
autoreconf -i
automake --foreign -Wall
./configure
make dist

and then copy the tar.gz file to the ppc64le which then you only need to use
./configure
make
sudo make install



In terms of FontForge, the make system is progressing, but is not yet at a 
point where you can use make dist to transfer a copy to the ppc64le if you 
are unable to use autoconf tools.

If you can use autoconf, then, please use the FontForge located on github:
git clone https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge.git ~/fontforge

You might have additional resources here:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=arch+linux+fontforge+20140101


Last, but not least,
We are interested in seeing FontForge run on the ppc64le.
Please try the copy described above, located on GitHub and we can start 
from that point to see what is needed to make it go.

Thanks,
Joe

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