kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> Lorenzo wrote:
>> --- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>> wxFont support can give us a bridge to any font, we do not have to baby 
>>> sit fonts anymore at that point.
>>> 
>> wxFont is a little too abstract... let aside that I can't see a way to request a rotation... how do you ask it a render of 100dpi (for example) without antialiasing but hinted?

In C++ too abstract is usually better than not abstract enough. This
way you can derive from wxFont to provide your specific font
implementation while still working within the wxWidgets framework.

> 
> antialiasing in a gerber file?
> 
> hinting in a gerber file?
> 
> 
> I did not say anything about system fonts. I said wxFonts. This is an 
> API. Clearly Kicad can bring along its own fonts, or more importantly, 
> the user can install his own. wxFont on a wxGraphicsContext needs to be 
> explored.

Agreed! Too many drawing object manipulations (fonts included) happen
outside of the device context. I'm guessing that before we can
effectively use wxFont, we are probably going to have to fix the the
drawing code to allow the device context to handle things like
coordinate scaling, offsetting, and clipping internally. If we need any
coordinate manipulation or specific drawing code that wxDC does not
provide, than we should derive our own DC from wxDC to provide any
missing or unique functionality rather than manipulate this outside of
the DC. I know this is off topic but piling more drawing code on top of
the current drawing code will just make Kicad harder to maintain.

Wayne

> 
>> IMHO this is a job for raw freetype... polygonal outlines on screen (and maybe ps). Also, font names are NOT portable, as said in the wxFont docs... it seems that it can only use the system installed ones (and their names are notoriusly different between Windows and X... I don't know about Mac).
>>
>> Using system fonts for CAD is always a bad thing :P
>> 
> 
> Your opinion is now known. I am having trouble getting my opinion 
> understood.
> 
> 
> Dick