Re: [Freetype] 2.2 Release?

[David Turner]

Hello Ian,

Ian Britten wrote:
> Hi all,
> Does anyone have any newer/updated information regarding a v2.2 release,
> other than what is available at
>     http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/redesign.html
> [ Especially in light of Davids recent announcement (Congrats David!) ]
>
> We're looking for some guidance about what version of FreeType to target
> our software against.

Well 2.1.3 is pretty stable, unlike previous releases in the 2.1.x family,
and 2.1.4 will _definitely_ be something stable, and probably quickly
renamed to 2.2.0 if we don't find some major defect after the official
release.

Fact is that most of the changes I envisionned in the original re-design
document have not been performed, though some progress has been made in the
internals. There are mostly two reasons for this:

  - many new features were added, some as planned, some not, and they
    fitted the existing "architecture", or required minor tweaking

  - I've experimented a lot with cleanup-stack exception handling
    with many prototypes of the MLib in recent months. While I'm
    beginning to really love it, I've come to the conclusion that
    it would be a better idea to start re-writing the font engine
    from scratch rather than trying to adapt the current source
    code to it.

    As surprising as it may seem, I believe that a complete re-write
    will take far less time. Of course, I don't mean to throw out
    all that has been achieved in FT2, and providing a 100% binary
    and source compatible API is a requirement.

I don't know if I'll have the time to do so, but my next steps after
the 2.2 release will probably be to:

  - release MLib 0.1 publicly
  - release first alpha of FreeType 3 using it

but don't take anything for a promise :-)

> We've got some deep/extensive integration with FreeType, including our
> own FT_Face (for our own legacy fonts), rendering engine(s), ICU
> integration, etc, etc.  We are currently using 2.0.9, and have started
> moving to v2.1.3, but now have some hesitation.
>
> We've run into some coding changes, etc. - Nothing serious, but it means
> we can't just drop in 2.1.3 as a replacement for 2.0.9 (Our code wouldn't
> compile/work)
That's right. While 2.1.4 will be somewhat stable and a good candidate for
2.2. I cannot guarantee that we will not make other important internal
changes to support new features (like Graham's recent "unpatented" bytecode
interpreter). But these should normally happen in the 2.3.x branch.

And of course, everything tagged experimental (the stroker, the synthetizer),
or even "beta" (the cache sub-system) could well change in important ways
in the future.

> We've got no problem requiring 2.1.(3/4), but the FreeType roadmap says
> that 2.1.x should be considered unstable until 2.2.x is released.  Thus,
> we're wondering how close 2.1.(3/4) is to whatever 2.2.x will be (in terms
> of functionality, changes, etc), and if there is a tentative date
> (Month? Quarter? Year?) for v2.2?
No date, we're currently in the freeze/bugfix stage for releasing 2.14

> If 2.2.x is 'A Ways Off', I suspect we'll have to target 2.1.(3/4).  I
> suspect that community momentum will embrace newer versions of FreeType
> sooner rather than later, and we'll have to target whatever the most
> widely used version is.
> Put another way, 2.0.9 may be the prevalent version right now, but if
> 2.2.x is very far off, I predict that 2.1.(3/4) will become the most
> prevalent version...
>
> [ Dunno if anyone has noticed, but the upcoming Mandrake 9.1 is going to
> be shipping with 2.1.3 - Should I take that as a sign that 2.1.3 *is*
> the mainstream/stable(?) version? ]
I'm not speaking for Mandrake, but I suppose that it only means that
it is sufficiently stable for Mandrake, and that they really wanted the
auto-hinter of 2.1.3, which is much better than the one in 2.0.9 :-)

Regards,

- David Turner
- The FreeType Project  (www.freetype.org)