[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#2414) tileset font problems

["Reinier Post via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 03:45:16PM -0800, Jason Short via RT wrote:
> 
> Tilesets are allowed to specify fonts, but this system is broken in two 
> ways.
> 
> 1. The fonts are specified as X fonts, which many clients cannot 
> understand (and currently ignore).
> 
> 2. There are just a few fonts, and they are hard-coded into the GUI code 
> and use automatically by the GUI in many places.  For instance the "city 
> productions font" may be used on the radar screen for the intro freeciv 
> text, just for lack of anything better.

This suggests that all font names are hardcoded into the code.
But there are font configuration files: X resources for Xaw,
and ~/freeciv.rc for the GTK+ client.  The correct syntax of the latter
even changed aroudn the time 1.13.0 came out, as I noticed when I was
producing the FUADEC t-shirt.

> Vasco had some ideas for solutions to #1: use CSS-style font 
> descriptions, or .ini-style font descriptions, which hopefully can be 
> interpreted by all clients.  I know little about this.

I don't think the Xaw client will ever be portable to a non-X GUI system,
so it seems to me that X fonts strings specified with X resources
are the correct way to specify its fonts.

Generally speaking, I don't think font specifications are GUI system
independent.  I mean, you just do not *want* to specify the city name
font in a GUI independent way.

> For #2, I think we need a font system similar to the current sprite 
> system.  The GUI should provide a "struct font" and functions such as 
> load_font().  The core code (not the GUI!) can then track these font 
> structures and pass around the font that should be used in each situation.

I doubt this.  Different GUI environments have different font
handling capabilities.

-- 
Reinier