The Next XFree86 Wars: XFT2 vs STSF 337
NoSun writes "Sun's latest project is to create a font library for XFree86, named Stsf, that would replace Fontconfig and Xft2. But the big question is: Does the world need yet another X font library that would create more incompatibility and fragmentation? Well known Gnome and GTK+ developers are against this (yet another) X font library which just re-invents the wheel one more time with the result of slowing down KDE and Gnome in the desktop race. "
Still inferior (Score:3, Informative)
Competition is a good thing, but in this case collaboration is even better. The more situations we have like this, the longer it will take for Linux to be ready for the desktop.
Hello, logic? (Score:5, Insightful)
- If Sun's project is vastly *superior*, then the people who switch to it will enjoy a great implementation. You shouldn't force Sun to collaborate in this case. Mozart's compositions wouldn't be as good if he had been forced to "collaborate" with the inferior composers of his time.
- It's only if Sun's project is "comparable" to previous projects that it will cause fragmentation.
Re:Hello, logic? (Score:2)
Re:Still inferior (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, there is still a mess behind the scenes with font rendering. These non-TrueType legacy fonts sitting around should just go away. The frustration that sometimes, mystically, some fonts get anti-aliased and some don't - this isn't something end-users should have to deal with (and to the credit of the Mandrake people, I haven't yet seen any of these problems with the default fontconfig in 9.1). The real problem is the mixing together of all the "legacy" X11 fonts for old school X Windows apps with new TrueType fonts used in modern XRender/Xft apps. This creates a font management nightmare. What's worse is none of the font management programs make all this stuff crystal clear and usable, even for an experienced user.
So yes, font management is still a big thorn in the side of the X Window System, though it's much better now than it used to be, with Xft/XRender. I don't really see why we would do anything other than A) incrementally improve those and B) make the old rendering system OPTIONAL and try to get everything in modern Linux distros ported over to used the new X rendering infrastructure.
Rather than writing new font management subsystems for X, perhaps we should look for the longer term to alternatives to X, architectures that are cleaner for a desktop environment, where we can provide source-level compatibility for Qt and Gtk apps, and make the old X protocol a strap-on (like running an X server on a Windows box, or on Mac OS X), so that people who need to run legacy X apps can still do so, but that those who want a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-use desktop environment can get it.
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
firstly you dont qualify sir/mam. you aint in the category of a "joe user". you are ready to play around with font names , font dirs , x config files, truetype fonts etc right ?
and secondly, i call BULLSHIT. sorry for the harsh words. not directed at you. i just finished a fresh install of psyche and i use debian and other versions of linux on and off
daily and i think....
X SUCKS ASS.
believe me i cant stop laughing whenever i look
at X and whenever i hear people say things like
"too much eyecandy in XP and
Re:Still inferior (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the fact that X sucks is being used to force very bad ideas (such as toolkits in the server) that would condemn Linux to being totally unable to compete with any platform that allows innovation in the user interface.
What X needs is easy to program for and advanced rendering capabilities. I can draw a damn button, what I can't draw right now is UTF-8 text. Programmers using "consistency" as an excuse to force people to use their own implementation of a button, rather than getting to work on hard stuff like rendering, are causing more damage to Linux (and Windows, too!) than anything.
Re:Still inferior (Score:5, Informative)
XRender seemed to greatly improve font output quality in X. And I understand it, XRender and the Xft extensions basically do exactly what we both agree should have been done. In other words, it's already there. For example, Xft has the API call:
void XftDrawStringUtf8 (XftDraw *d, XftColor *color, XftFont *font, int x, int y, XftChar8 *string, int len);
Clearly this DOES let you draw a UTF-8 string on a button pretty damned easily. Now where we disagree is whether this is "good enough". I judge this based on opening up my KDE desktop and looking at the apps that I want to use. Evolution (which is better than Kmail), Phoenix, OpenOffice - shit, these are all Gtk applications. Oh wait, you mean Gtk apps don't look right with my KDE desktop? Separate themes, different theming functions (which I can't for the life of me figure out how to access without having Gnome on my machine). This is a nightmare.
Face it. Windows at least strongly suggests policy for everything. You can always go and roll your own in Windows too. But all the normal desktop apps have consistent colors, toolbar structure, use the same fonts, render them through the same system, and so on. If everybody used Gtk or if everybody used Qt, I suppose there wouldn't be a problem, but they don't. I don't like people "innovating" with new GUI toolkits. If you need to create a custom widget for a specific app, fine, but I want one set of menus, one set of text drawing functions, etc.
Perhaps it could be solved by a common theming system and some basic shared libraries that are developed cooperatively between Qt and Gtk so that they can still "innovate" separately all they want, but keep some of these basic functions consistent to guarantee a common look and feel without having to play ridiculous games looking for themes like BlueCurve specifically designed to look alike on both systems.
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Informative)
Er, right. If only there were a function like XftDrawStringUtf8...
Er, right. Actually, programmers have been working on what you want. The programmers who matter for these purposes haven't been implementing buttons. Of course, the documentation, standardization, and popularization of this work has somewhat lagged, but UT
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
In XFree86, I think it WO
Ok, fixed the fonts (Score:5, Funny)
Sheesh.
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... yes, the font rendering in X might be good. But what the Linux world really is missing is a centralized, standard font system for all applications. I can certainly enjoy nice on-screen fonts. But try writing a document using the app of your choice, and then printing it. OpenOffice is on the right way (at least it manages to use TrueType fonts to print correct PostScript documents). But currenty it's a real pain to be able to pick any font on the system by its unique name, and then go and use this sam
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a mistake to think that there's a centralised standard font system on the other platforms. Windows and MacOS b
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Informative)
All the "clipped font rendering" issues (like your clipped S and so forth) that I had with my older Mandrake 9 installation are finally gone with my curre
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still inferior (Score:5, Informative)
1) FreeType is *very* good. With TrueType hinting enabled, the output on a standard resolution LCD is *dead identical* with the output for the Windows rasterizer. On a high-res LCD, any version of FreeType with the improved autohinters is also extremely good. I personally prefer it to ClearType's rendering, for two reasons: it doesn't require sub-pixel AA (which still causes visible color fringing in Cleartype) to look sharp, and letter shapes look more natural (less hinted, but still sharp). If you don't believe me, look at screenshots of my desktop: this [gatech.edu] and this. [gatech.edu]
2) Rendering quality has nothing to do with Xft vs Stsf. Neither of these font services do the actual rendering; that is still handled by FreeType. These services are for font finding and font matching.
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Interesting)
FreeType is *very* good. With TrueType hinting enabled, the output on a standard resolution LCD is *dead identical* with the output for the Windows rasterizer.
Except no Linux distro can legally ship a product with TrueType hinting enabled. Apple has patents on TrueType hinting. [sourceforge.net] So Linux fonts look worse than Windows fonts because of Apple. Ironic?
Re:Still inferior (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite interesting, and stsf looks like it may have certain advantages over xft2. xft2 for example does not do layout - that's an application thing (gnome uses pango according to the doc) and stsf DOES do layout. According to sun, stsf has a 30-200% performance improvement over xft2.
stsf does NOT solve all the problems with X fonts however. They are still a god awful mess in regards to configuration.
Re:Still inferior (Score:3, Interesting)
Must realize... (Score:2, Interesting)
2) Windows font rending probably isn't better "technically". Windows font rendering is superior because it's the only rendering system they have, so applications can't prance along using something else. They have stuck by their rendering system and improved it over the years, too, not because it was technologically prefect, but because Microsoft can fire anyone that wants to do something else.
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
The font rendering system on Windows is pretty much irrelevant to anything: it makes no difference at printing resolutions, and at screen resolutions the Linux bitmaps and FT renderers are perfectly adequate for on-screen use. Furthermore, any differences will be meaningless once screen resolutions go up a little further.
Besides, this idea of an exact WYSIWYG representa
Re:Still inferior (Score:5, Informative)
You mean that microsoft has given things like NFS, Pam, Openoffice.org, Netbeans, ... to the community? :)
If only that were true, then we could use more "microsofts of the unix world"
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
Examples? (Score:2)
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
Now, after years of UNIX survival thanks to SUN, in which time they gave away lots of stuff, protocols and specs such as NFS and NIS, sponsored TCL for a while, "gave" us Java, Linux might be mature enough to take over the low end UNIX market. The high end market, which is taking share away from mainframes these days is still far out of reach, and Solaris is virtually unchall
Re:Still inferior (Score:2)
If it has come to some changes on XP I don't know, because it's a long time since I trashed them.
For what's on CRT I don't know, never tryed them. But I can tell RH makes rendering very clear on my 22".
Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are many True Type fonts out there just look here
http://www.1001freefonts.com/xfonts.htm
This is the best I could find for True Type fonts on linux
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue28/ayers1.html
X 4 does support True Type Fonts but it makes it harder to use, It should be an automatic thing. How hard would it be to to add the the "startx" script
---
STARTEDFROM = `pwd`
cd
# this assumes that the True Type fonts are in that directory
ttmkfdir > fonts.scale
mkfontdir
cd $STARTEDFROM
---------
Face it we will not get Joe end use on linux if we keep things hard to use, if you want Joe end use to use linux, we must make it as easy to use and setup as windows is. Don't get me wrong I love linux and would not use anything else, but I don't have problems with it because I do know know to deal with it and am not afraid of my computer. Joe end user, does not know how to deal with computers and to an extent is afraid of computers. I think it is that fear that prevents more people from just toying with their computers, the are afraid that if they break something the computer will never work again, it is this fear we have to eliminate before we get people to be comfortable with their computers.
Sorry about the long post, I stop rambling now.
This is just my 2c (if you must give me change back, give it back)
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:5, Informative)
If they werent, the OS community would have cloned them by now.
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:2)
Sort of...see link. Apple owns some patents on truetype. Here [sourceforge.net]
If they werent, the OS community would have cloned them by now.
They have. Freetype. From whence I got the link.
Brief synopsis: Creating true-type fonts and distributing them is not infringing on a patent. Using them isn't either, mostly - there are a few rendering techniques that make truetype fonts look great on systems that license the tech. To use these in an OS/program that doesn't licens
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This probably sounds like a silly question, but (Score:2)
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:2)
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:2)
True for a multiuser box, but for Joe end user, it does not matter, he does not think about security, That is why in XP you can disable the login screen and have a automatic log in. See here [winguides.com] Joe end use just sees security like this as something that keeps him (or her) away from his work or games.
Harder to use? More automatic than what? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. XFree86 supports TrueType just like it supports Type1 fonts. You just make sure the proper module is in your XF86Config (which it is in most cases these days), and you're set. Type1 fonts aren't "built in" either, and they shouldn't be.
You just contradicted yourself. Either we need to make it easier so Joe User can continue fearing his computer, or we eliminate the fear so Joe has no problem with configuring his computer.
You are more correct in your latter assessment though. The "Microsoft attitude" (also the "Apple attitude" I suppose) is that users are dumb, and dumb is A-OK, and computers are these magical boxes they deign to make accessible for the lowly end user to use. It's pretty easy to show that nothing is really difficult, it's all a result of this attitude. Stick a complete newbie, who has never used a computer before, or not enough to get used to one, in front of a Linux box, with some instructions. Watch them do great. Now stick a fairly experience Windows user in front of a Linux box, with even better instructions. Watch them flounder miserably. I've repeated this experiment many times, and it's quite sad.
Anyway, back on topic. X fonts. There's no reason you can't add your own to your own user directory with something like the above. And of course there's no reason to restart X, either. Just xset fp+ /my/font/dir, run the proper mkfontdir commands on it, and xset fp rehash. Stick something like this in your .xinitrc and you should be set with something like $HOME/.myfonts you can add stuff to. It'd even be trivial to script up a GUI.
Re:Harder to use? More automatic than what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I concur (Score:2)
I most wholeheartedly concur.
However, let's not forget that "easier to learn" and "easier to use" are two completely different things. Something that is easier to use, such as a good editor, may be harder to learn. But, you only learn once; you'll be using it for a m
Re:Harder to use? More automatic than what? (Score:2)
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:5, Informative)
1) A font renderer. The underyling font renderer for both is FreeType2. Each one will have pretty much the same output.
2) A font standard. This is not a replacement or competitor to TrueType or Postscript fonts.
stsf and xft are font services libraries. They're libraries that applications use to find fonts, get information about fonts, match non-available fonts to available ones, and request that text be rendered (though the rendering, again, is done by a seperate back-end renderer).
X can already use TrueType fonts, btw. What we're talking about is the service that's use to find and render those fonts.
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:3, Interesting)
that's nice for home computers and very simple uses. But those of us that have managed Terminal servers use that font server.
remember Linux and X is not some rinky-dink consumer OS like the Microsoft products, it's a enterprise scale product designed for networks and distributed use, you just happen to be using 1/10th of it's capabilities and don't
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:2)
Re:Why not True Type Fonts. (Score:2)
It has. XFree86 supports TT fonts in its xfs server, in the display server itself, and the current generation of client libraries (fontconfig / Xft2) support client side handling of TT fonts as well.
Also what is up the the Fonts now coming to X over a socket, I usaly just disable that and point my X configuration to the directory that has the Fonts in it
There's no difference, as far as the X server is concerned. You won't see a performance difference, but c
makes we want to go back to lynx+pine+tin (Score:4, Funny)
Go back? I never left! (Score:2)
I know the OSS movement hates monolithic arcitectures, but I can't help but think the GUI environment under UNIX would be much better off with a monolithic GUI component that handled fonts, the window manager, GUI library and so on. One thing to bu
Sun (Score:3, Informative)
Don't mess things up... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why ? Simple: if it's not broken, don't fix it. The thing is, it works, why try to mess things up ? Try improving on them or make them better, but don't create another monster.
And Sun... Please... Anyone but them, they're already having problems keeping their OS together, common...
RV
Re:Don't mess things up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't mess things up... (Score:2, Insightful)
Except maybe if I'm running X on a Sparc... Then, I would surely be more than happy to save 200% of my time working instead of waiting for this slower-than-slow processor. Let's face it, SPARC is far from being a great revolution here, that's probably why they're trying so hard to develop new softwares to increase performances, or at least, give the illusion that it performs better.
But again, I'm running Linux on my P4
Re:Don't mess things up... (Score:3, Interesting)
Viewing "pages" is not where the differences are seem. Think about all the output generated from something like s full kernel compile, and then think about it again.
Once you've done that, try it! You would be amazed at how much difference there is between compiling a kernel with the output going to:
a) xterm (using standard x core fonts)
b) gnome-terminal (using xft fonts)
or even:
c) console.
c is significantly faster than
Re:Don't mess things up... (Score:2)
I got the impression the main reason Sun wanted this is for the SunRay boxes.
Re:Don't mess things up... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure about Java though, but it's got a mind of its own.
More is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Enforcing a standard library on everyone just invites bloat. If Sun wants to develop their own font library, my reply is "So what?". If people like their library, they will use it. If they find that the library is bloated or duplicated effort, people will avoid it like the plague.
Why folks at Gnome or KDE would care how Sun chooses to spend their resources is beyond my comprehension. No one is holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to use STSF. Let them continue to use the current font library.
And why is anyone taking Sun seriously in the realm of Linux/GNU/XFree anyhow? Wasn't Sun supposed to release their own version of Linux by now?
Re:More is better (Score:2, Funny)
I mean its open source. If Sun wants to waste effort reinventing the wheel, then it's their effort to waste.
People around here seem so convinced that open source coders are somehow have obligations. They dont.
It's like "Why is that guy giving away free pizza? I had pizza for lunch, he should be giving away tacos!"
Re:More is better (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More is better (Score:3, Insightful)
> realm of Linux/GNU/XFree anyhow? Wasn't Sun
> supposed to release their own version of Linux by
> now?
Well, Sun is one of the larger contributors to the
GNOME project. Not that that alone gives them any
more say on the issue than others, but perhaps it
does show their interest in and committment to other
free/open projects such as GNOME and XFree.
Re:More is better (Score:2)
Mister Proper made a similar comment, so let me address you both in one reply.
If a company's Linux/Open Source contribution is in the form of support that has strings attached, then I figure you need to watch your back.
I think that Sun supports Gnome because it
Solaris and Gnome (Score:2)
Compatibility vs. evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes for an improvement you should throw all previous code and start from zero, ask BIND and sendmail people about this.
restarting X (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
I don't think you have to restart with Xft either, although I havn't had an opportunity to install a font under it yet.
Re:restarting X (Score:5, Informative)
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
In windows, there's this function which can be used to register for a directory change (don't know how it's called), and not-brand-new kernel versions don't have that.
So, when some core libraries come around using this function, there should be a non hackish way to automatically register fonts when they are dropped into a directory.
That's just me guessing.
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
Re:restarting X (Score:2)
Mightn't this be a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when I worked at Be, we licensed a renderer from Bitstream, specifically because writing a really good type renderer is exceptionally hard.
Perhaps this is an area where Open Source nees a leg up from a well-funded commercial outfit, like Sun. Can anyone comment on the actual quality of this new library, relative to existing solutions?
Re:Mightn't this be a good thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mightn't this be a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
XFT2 needs the XRender XFree86 extension ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't/won't they support the XRender extension?
Are the features available from STSF (which is under the BSD license) sufficiently better than what is available to warrant the work necessary for making the changeover?
Re:XFT2 needs the XRender XFree86 extension ... (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately it does not work.
The real underlying problem (for Sun) is that the XRENDER extension requires 32-bit frame buffers. Sun's (at least most of their) frame buffers support 8 bits and 24 bits and maybe 1 bit. Sun's bogus XRENDER probably exists in order to please {Star,Open}Office which may only need the 8-bit part.
Sun could probably upgrade the frame buffer drivers, but it is not clear that deployed cards have that extra 33% memory ly
Re:XFT2 needs the XRender XFree86 extension ... (Score:2)
change. (Score:2)
On the other hand this infighting is hurting all the *NIXs. If the development of the GUI system is stopped because of this stupuid crap we will never see commercail quality entertinament titles relased on the *NIXs. and it wouldn't matter how nice KDE/Gnome look if you can't bring in the gamers tio the desktop market Linux people are looking to take from Microsoft.
Name change? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they should rename it to stfu...
Baa--dum! Thank you.. I'll be here all weekend.
Competition is good (Score:2)
Possibly competition will help both project move along faster.
Since it currently sucks... (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone new to the internals of X (but not Unix) it took me the better part of a day to sifting through out-dated documentation and installing font software and scripts for previous versions of X and hacking out the bugs, just to get the CorelDraw fonts I paid for to be available in the GIMP. In hindsight I can see how I could have done it in about 20 minutes, but it was anything but friendly.
Havoc makes a good point:
You also still have to show the server-side stuff working with good performance and real-life significant memory savings.
But one can't put something to that test unless one develops it.
It basically comes down to: If a corporation is going to invest money in an open source development they are going to have some influence on how it's spent (in this case in terms of man hours). This influence may not be considered optimal to the other people in the movement, but it is Sun's money to spend.
And since I'm running RH 8.0, and OpenOffice, GIMP and AbiWord all have completely different font selections, I can't really see how it's going to get more fragmented.
Thank you for your efforts Sun Microsystems, I'm anxious to see the reuslts.
State of the Art (Score:2)
As someone new to the internals of X (but not Unix) it took me the better part of a day to sifting through out-dated documentation and installing font software and scripts for previous versions of X and hacking out the bugs, just to get the CorelDraw fonts I paid for to be available in the GIMP. In hindsight I can see how I could have done it in about 20 minutes, but it was anything but friendly.
20 minutes with hindsight? Ok - here is the state of the art.
Re:That sounds cool, how does it really work? (Score:2)
If you are missing a .fonts directory, just create one:
mkdir ~/.fonts
Fontconfig keeps tabs on what is happening to the font directories it is monitoring and updates the X server lists as appropriate. All the other directories it monitors by default are only accessible by the superuser but you can add your own personal fonts to your own .fonts directory and fontconfig will pick up the new entries. If you ever get stuck and you think that fontconfig is missing some entries it should have seen, you can run
Re:Since it currently sucks... (Score:3, Informative)
Having worked on these projects, I know all too well how bad it was. The font situation *was* deeply fragmented. Fontconfig made it all better. Let's not make it suck again. IMO, Sun would do better to simply support the Render extension o
XFree86 Using Bugzilla (Score:2)
Question... (Score:4, Interesting)
How open is Opentype [adobe.com]?
Answer and it is not re-inventing the wheel (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree it is reinventing the wheel, but rather it prevents reinventing the wheel, since now OTF'S are being developed for each toolkit, like gtk uses pango, while
Stsf: because Xft2 doesn't use enough buzzwords (Score:4, Insightful)
Xft2 is slightly inferior in that it doesn't have a way of communicating the data to the server pre-rasterization, so that the server can use hardware acceleration in the rendering process. Of course, there's no particular reason that, once XRENDER is complete, this couldn't be done.
Sun fonts vs. OSS fonts (Score:3, Informative)
Whether this has any bearing on the specific issue of XFT2 vs. STSF, I don't know. Perhaps the proposed STSF doesn't even resemble the font set in Solaris, and perhaps my RedHat font issues have nothing to do with XFT2. But regardless, I use Solaris on my desktop for font reasons, and I'm more likely to trust Sun's fonts than OSS ones simply because of my prior experience.
Of course sometimes prior experience can cause people to be stubborn, ignorant and misinformed. I'll hope that's not the case here...
Re:Sun fonts vs. OSS fonts (Score:2)
this could be a good thing--but only in theory (Score:2)
The trouble is, Sun has produced one bloated failure after another when it comes to graphics and window systems: from OpenWindows to NeWS to Java2D. They promise a lot, but they don't deliver. Just based on their history, I really don't want them anywhere near X11.
Re:this could be a good thing--but only in theory (Score:2)
Too late [x.org].
Re:this could be a good thing--but only in theory (Score:2)
How to set up fonts in Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just want some decent looking fonts like the MS Core fonts and some other new TrueTypes like the Bitstream Veras.
The only resource that I've found that helped was the font De-uglification how-to. Say for Debian woody. The fonts look like crap out of the box, how do you make everything look nice? I see these gorgeous anti-aliased font screenshots but have no idea
Who cares? (Score:2)
Really, modern monitors are making things like anti-aliasing obsolete and inferior. I have a 1600x1200 screen. Even with fonts sizes at 120 and no anti-aliasing, they look fine. if anything, anti-aliasing makes fonts look worse -- what it really is is font-bluring. And GNU/Linux does have scaleable (vector) fonts, which means that they don't become blocky messes as you scale them up.
So, why do we need this
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
My grandfather designed the first machine that made steel belted tires. So in a sense, he reinvented the wheel, and that was a good thing.
Just because someone is redoing something that exists, doesn't mean it is a bad thing.
One already exists of course..... (Score:5, Insightful)
That means STSF doesn't have to be just a little bit better, it has to be VASTLY better to justify ripping out a brand new font architecture. Nobody is convinced it is.
Other people seem to be of the belief that having 2 competing font systems is ok. It's not - this is two competing interfaces, NOT implementations. Well, STSF can apparently emulate Xft, but you don't get any advantages that way, so what's the point?
So STSF had better be pretty amazing to justify it. Sure, Sun can go and use it if they like, but it'd require major b0rkage of GTK, and those patches would probably not make it back into the trunk, so they'd have basically forked GTK. Not good.
Why and old distro is a happy day. (Score:3, Insightful)
For those of you who couldn't (or didn't want to) (Score:2)
The people who built the first Motif Font architecture didn't know squat about what they where doing, even measured on a pixelfont level. They might as well
The whole current setup that just barely manages, made up of a bazzilion tidbits from xft ftx sftsxftftxsxstfts bitstreams ftfi (praise them!!!), Motif *shatonscreen* pixelfonts, KDEs fontrendering (finally from engineers with more th
Re:Ironic... (Score:2)
Re:Ironic... (Score:2)
http://www.gnome.org/intro/findout.html:
How this troll got Informative is beyond me (Score:3, Informative)
Graphics and CORBA are independent parts of the GNOME platform, that aren't necessarily used together.
That, and other claims in the parent comment, are just rehashed old trolls. Move on.
Re:Ironic... (Score:2)
Not that it'd matter performance wise anyway. Bonobo/ORBit is many times faster than DCOP.
Re:gtk has sucky use of xft2 anyway (Score:2)
Re:gtk has sucky use of xft2 anyway (Score:2)
That problem won't go away until there's a neutral, acceptable to all configuration system that GTK can depend on.
Re:BSD licensed? (Score:2)