RE: [Freetype] Question about merged fonts...

[Pedriana, Paul]

     >>Have the code that draws the text have a list of 
     >>multiple fonts to use, in order of preference...

   >It is always a good idea to give the user the 
   >possibility to set preferences.

In the end, I think I am probably going to go with this 
route. The other two (below) either take too much time 
for now or are not good. One thing to mention is that our 
app is a game and as soon as we allow users to specify 
fonts used in the game, we open up a rather large can
of worms. We are using the text in 3D and not simply 
as text in a window control. We'd have to have the code
deal with all the problems that can happen when users
throw the app a curveball (e.g. bad or strange font).
Any problems that show up (and they inevitably do),
are something we have to provide technical support for,
regardless of who's fault the problem is. We are not 
writing word processors and simply don't have the 
bandwidth for this kind of thing. 





      >>Have the font code provide the above multiple 
      >>font support internally...

   >I think you need this also.
   >Martin Dürst (now at the WWW consortium) has further...

I like the idea. Maybe some day I'll get enough time to 
implement this, but I don't see it happening any time 
soon. My next free three day weekend will be spent getting
Vorbis support into our sound system.




      >>Somehow provide a font file that has all the 
      >>needed characters in it...

   >This is the worst solution for many scripts, only 
   >useful as a last-resort font. It works nicely for 
   >fonts where a single code point can be mapped to a 
   >single glyph, but it will fail if this assumption
   >is incorrect (e.g. Indic scripts -- about 30 to 40 
   >code points can map up to 3000 glyphs).

I see and agree. On the other hand, we are shipping to 
these languages alone:
   U.S. English, U.K. English, French, German, 
   Italian, Spain Spanish, Mexico Spanish, 
   Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish,
   Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified 
   Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Korean.
With the exception of Thai, these languages all 
involve straightforward character mapping, don't they?
Either way, this solution probably isn't practical 
anyway, so I won't be pursuing it.