Custom font format

Xavier Bestel xavier.bestel at free.fr
Mon Jan 10 04:17:59 PST 2011


Hi,

On Mon, 2011-01-10 at 12:59 +0100, Michael Thalmeier wrote:
> Hi !
> We are currently developing an application that is using xlib directly for
> all the drawing operations.
> Our problem is, that we have a huge library of fonts in a custom font
> format, that is currently not supported by the x server.
> Does anybody know what would be the best way to deal with such custom font
> formats ?

Nowadays the winning strategy seems to be to handle all text client-side
and blit it on screen using XRender. So either you convert your fonts to
an existing format (OpenType even handles bitmap fonts), or you do your
own font drawing routines.
You could think of extending Freetype2 to handle your format, but you'll
have to maintain your code on your own, and I don't think it's a trivial
task.

HTH,
	Xav




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