Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: fonts in X11 Message-ID: <19880707121730.7.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 7 Jul 88 12:17:00 GMT References: <23656@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 16 Don't confuse current implementation with specification. (I know that traditionally there is no distinction in Unix, but humor me.) There is precious little in the X protocol spec that prohibits the use of non-bitmap, scalable fonts. It makes good sense to adopt a rational font naming scheme, that includes some "size" metric in the name, and have the server use (e.g.) an outline font internally and scale the font instances appropriately. From the application point of view, this isn't much different from using findfont/scalefont in PostScript. It doesn't give you PostScript's further font scaling via CTMs, but for many applications that kind of dynamics isn't essential. There is a wrinkle in deciding what ListFonts should return, but simple naming/property conventions can solve that; return the name of an instance of the font in some canonical unit, and identify (via the font name or a property of the font) that the font is scalable. If someone is interested in donating code ...