Re: freetype can't read gzipped fonts

[Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@pps.jussieu.fr>]

XB> I'm trying to use some bitmapped fonts with Xft, but they're all
XB> packaged as .bdf.gz or .pcf.gz, and freetype can't read that.

Correct.

XB> I could manually gunzip all my font directories, but then next upgrade
XB> will mess it up.

Correct.  There are three people in the world who understand the
``hold'' feature of dpkg, but nobody is quite sure who they are.

XB> Either X fonts packages should ship gunzipped fonts, or freetype should
XB> s/open/gzopen/g ...

The latter is difficult -- FreeType thinks it can seek around font
files.  The former is not advised, as uncompressed PCF are *huge*.

So for now you're pretty much stuck.  Sorry for that.

The long-term solution is to switch from PCF and BDF to a
FreeType-friendly format for bitmap fonts -- we're going to use a
variant of Apple's sfnt resource format, also (incorrectly) known as
``bitmap-only TTFs''.  Unfortunately, the switch won't happen in time
for 4.3.0.

You can have a sneak preview of the work on the bitmap-only sfnt
format by playing with fonttootf, which you'll find somewhere on

  http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/files/

Please be aware that this is early alpha code, and that it may do
anything at all.

                                        Juliusz