Re: [ft] ftmac.c

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 19, 2009, at 09:07, address@hidden wrote:

> I want to remove modern src/base/ftmac.c for Mac OS X, and
> I want to keep legacy builds/mac/ftmac.c for pre-Mac OS X.
> The QuickDraw API on pre-Mac OS X won't be changed anymore,
> so the future changes of builds/mac/ftmac.c would be only
> bug fix. On the other hand, if we keep src/base/ftmac.c
> synchronized to Mac OS X, there are too many issues:
>
> * Since Mac OS X 10.5, CoreFoundation is announced to be
>   danger in Unix-like programs which can fork. So Carbon-free
>   implementation is expected. This is the most serious
>   motivation to obsolete src/base/ftmac.c.
>   http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype/2007-11/msg00000.html

Agreed, this is a problem. In MacPorts we had been using --with-old- 
mac-fonts at a user's request, but we've had to remove that option on  
Leopard and up to work around this problem.

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/15909


> * As I've shown my experiment with "partial stream", it
>   is possible to reduce the memory allocation & maximum
>   footprint to handle resource-fork font by POSIX API only.
>
> * At present, FT2 has some interfaces to ATS font management.
>   it was originally introduced by me to provide a migration
>   from obsolete QuickDraw font management to modern one, but
>   it is completely wrong decision. Now it should be replaced
>   by CGFont for newer Mac OS X, the introduction of ATS to
>   FT2 was wrong decision. Also as you posted 64-bit issue of
>   cairo/pango universal binary, it is difficult to select
>   popular API which are available on all architechtures of
>   Mac OS X.

It does sound difficult. The Mac OS X font APIs seem to be changing  
often. Hopefully CGFont will be the one that sticks. But that's only  
on Leopard and newer, right? Will you keep ATS for Tiger and earlier  
then?


> Thus, I want to remove src/base/ftmac.c. I want to provide
> Carbon-free implementation which keeps user-visibile behaviour
> of FT_New_Face in ftmac.c, but I want to remove all APIs
> using Mac OS specific data types in their arguments, like,
> FT_New_Face_From_{FSSpec|FSRef|FOND} etc.
>
> How do you think of?

I don't write compiled software so I think you're more qualified than  
I to make these decisions. :)