Re: some XFree86 5.0 questions...

On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 02:52:28AM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > I forgot to mention that I have seen an unmodified GNOME desktop running
> > with STSF via this comparibility layer; 
> > 
> > What this means that an unmodified GTK+ recongnizes STSF as xft2/fontconfig.
> > 
> 
> Are you saying STSF uses fontconfig, or STSF emulates fontconfig?
> 
> I would want it to use fontconfig (or use 100% compatible file
> locations and config files). As long as it uses fontconfig, at least
> it isn't creating an additional font configuration system.  Having a
> single font configuration system is priority #1.
> 
> Having multiple *rendering* systems is a bit confusing for developers,
> but has limited user impact, while multiple font configuration systems
> has a very large negative user impact.


I will have to jump one day ahead of STSF 0.4 release announcement. One
of the new features of STSF 0.4 is introduction of STSF/Xft bridge.

STSF/Xft bridge is a drop-in replacement for Xft shared object that
provides binary compatibility for applications using Xft API.

Neither STSF nor STSF/Xft bridge replaces fontconfig. Applications
continue using fontconfig library but STSF/Xft bridge diverts
text output to STSF rendering pipeline.

When we were running GNOME desktop, pango-xft module was using our
STSF/Xft bridge instead of the original Xft library, and it was
quite happy about it in terms of performance. 

Please stay tuned for the release announcement and the updated web
site with screenshots and performance comparison.


AG


-- 
Alexander Gelfenbain, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
+1 (408) 635-0612