rawhide report: 20050121 changes

[Enrico Scholz]

Nicolas.Mailhot at laPoste.net (Nicolas Mailhot) writes:

>> >> emacs-21.3-20
>> >> -------------
>> > ...
>> > Any news on the Gtk Emacs front?
>> 
>> I would not spend much energy on such a port.  A Gtk port means AA
>> fonts which are really a bad choice for text based applications.
>
> A gtk port means fontconfig and AA ie all the users that do not use pure
> american files on a 75dpi screen can get some mileage out of emacs
> without ruining their eyes.
>
> fontconfig support is the single reason several people (including me)
> dumped emacs/xemacs altogether for vim/gvim recently. I'm amazed someone
> can maintain like you that fontconfig is a bad choice for text apps -
> surely an app that's devoted to displaying text is *more* sensitive to
> the text rendering tech than your average ogg player.

Ok, some assumptions:

* text apps used by me (XEmacs, xterm) are configured for 10pt fonts. I
  want to see much information and do not want larger fonts therefore,
  but fonts <10pt are too small for me

* fonts <=10pt should not be anti-aliased. This is stated in the font-howto
  [1] also.  These fonts are so small that stepping can not be seen, and
  antialiasing would add blurriness, remove information and slow down
  processing.

* free TrueType fonts (bitstream vera) in 10pt look unacceptably without
  antialiasing (lots of disrupted lines), antialiased ones are far away
  from being perfect. E.g. 'e', 'a' or 's' look somehow dirty, some
  lines are thicker than other ones, the white room in the upper half of
  'e' is not white but gray, letters are melt together, ...

* unfree TrueType fonts are ... mmh ... not free and not available in FC
  therefore. Using full power of them would need patented technology (TT
  bytecode interpreter) which is unavailable also

* standard bitmap fonts for 10pt are of perfect quality (I am using them
  currently and do not know how they could be enhanced)


AA fonts might be ok for applications with large fonts (graphic or
presentation programs, ogg players), but bitmap fonts are the best for
pure text based apps.



Enrico

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://ldp.openskills.info/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/fix.html