[cairo] Re: Cairo in an embedded environment: removing fontconfig, 16-bit RGB, porting issues

[John Steele Scott (t-tec)]

Carl Worth wrote:

> On Wed, 31 May 2006 14:03:01 -0400, "Mcirvin, Mathew" wrote:
>> I'm investigating using Cairo to provide rich 2D vector graphics
>> capabilities for our embedded OS for small devices.  It does what we
>> need and so far seems to be fantastically easy to use.
> 
> I'm very glad to hear it's working for you so far.
> 
>> 1. We already use FreeType, but we don't use fontconfig
> ...
>>    Cairo backend actually seems to *use* fontconfig's functionality is
>>    under the toy text API, which is not necessarily of use to us.
>> 
>>    Might it be a good idea to try to disentangle the fontconfig-based
>>    font selection/presentation stuff from the rest of the FreeType
>>    backend?  Are there known pitfalls associated with this approach?
> 
> I think it would be fine to add a configure option such as:
> 
> --disable-toy-text
> 
> or perhaps:
> 
> --without-fontconfig
> 
> or whatever, that would allow cairo to be built without any dependency
> on fontconfig. This would remove cairo_select_font_face from the API
> at least. Anything else?

I might have a use for that option as well. I'm currently playing with cairo
as a way to get PDF output (and nicer Windows output) from a Windows
program which I maintain. This program currently draws text using its own
bitmap font (which I've implemented in cairo using pattern-filled
rectangles), so I don't need any font support. If I could turn off
fontconfig, it would save me a couple of DLLs (fontconfig and expat, IIRC).

cheers,

John