Bug#399183: xserver-xorg: incorrectly calculates TrueType font metrics

Juliusz Chroboczek Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr
Fri Sep 7 04:26:30 PDT 2007


Hi Thomas,

>> This bug was introduced in revision 1.32 of ftfuncs.c[1] in XFree86
>> CVS[2] on 19 October 2003 by David Dawes <dawes at xfree86.org>.  This
>> commit was made against my opinion (as expressed on the internal
>> XFree86 mailing list), and was one of the reasons why I resigned from
>> XFree86.

> hmm (a mailing list cite here would be useful, since the attack is
> too one-sided for my tastes)

Sorry, I don't think the archives of members@ are available.  All
that's there is the commit history of ftfuncs.c, which I cited in my
previous message.

> The diff appears to refer to changes by "After X-TT Project".

This is correct.  The commit replaced the more error-prone parts of
the FreeType backend -- the parts that convert native font metrics
into X metrics --, with a few hundred lines of code that I do not
understand.

> Perhaps you'd like to complete the discussion by giving your opinions
> of the people who wrote the code.

Sorry, I'm not interested in ad hominem attacks.

I can give you my opinion of the code, though.  Just like the X-TT code
before that, it's over-engineered but with no readily apparent flaws.
However, it's too complex for me to understand.

                                        Juliusz



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