[PATCH app-xfs 2/3] doc: remove pdf target for developer's doc

Rémi Cardona remi at gentoo.org
Thu Jan 21 12:53:37 PST 2010


Le 21/01/2010 00:05, Thomas Dickey a écrit :
> The reason for xfs was to move the computation and I/O off to the server, 
> which might be far away, reducing both.

IIRC, xfs was design to move the initial rendering of font files into
font pixmaps out of the server to avoid temporary freezing when an
application requested a new font.

>  Client-side font-rendering 
> doesn't appear to solve that problem.  Rather than discussing technology, 
> so far all I've seen is noise about "new", etc.

Each app being responsible for generating and uploading fonts using
Render, it does solve all problems :

 - the server doesn't have to know anything about font formats should
new ones appear,
 - the font file isn't rendered by the server (the server only does the
final blit),
 - each app/toolkit can draw whatever fonts it wants, however it wants
(hinting, ligatures, bidi, etc)

Managing fonts isn't a job for the server, it's just waaay too complex
these days. (Just take a look at the CSS font specs...)

However, the server is still "font-aware" with Render's GLYPH* types
which allow caching the most used font glyphs to reduce network traffic.

Really, Thomas, client-side rendering is a _good_ thing :)

Cheers,

Rémi


More information about the xorg-devel mailing list