kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Thomas Spindler <tsp@...>]

Am Tuesday 09 June 2009 schrieb Dick Hollenbeck:
> > 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
>
> This is not off topic. We have had to do these manipulations because
> wxWidgets wxDC was not adequate to the task. Yet as it has evolved, we
> have not kept up. wxGraphicsContext is a whole new ball game. We
> continue to carry baggage to work around a weak graphics API, yet we
> have not really explored the more powerful graphics API found in
> wxGraphicsContext.
>
>
> Another thing that concerns me: less than a month ago we introduced a
> new font architecture. Now we hear that it is not adequate. I don't
> think that the folks who brought us that solution should now control the
> font solution path forever. In fact, I would say that they have
> demonstrated that they need additional ideas from others, by virtue of
> the fact that the original solution is now being thought of as
> inadequate or not comprehensive enough. We got a better looking
> screen, but some folks who had put in the international characters in
> the original font support lost that, no?
>
> Just being candid, and trying to get a more comprehensive discussion of
> all the options available to us. I encourage exploratory coding........
>
>
> Dick

Beeing one of the guys who put in int. characters I fully agree to Dicks point 
of view. There might be better ways to do the rendering but I don't have the 
knowledge to comment that.

However, using kicad for many years for documentation I have three major 
issues if it comes to text (glyph) handling:

1. On screen editing
2. Production documents ("Gerber's" etc.)
3. Documentation

In all three cases I would like to have a reproducible, precise and reasonable 
fast solution.

To me it seems that there is no other solution than to use stroke fonts.

I was so happy when I realized that the Hershey font handling appeard in kicad 
and I realy like it.

The (minor) things that I would like to modify are:
- use a glyph base that has at least some int. chars (UTF-8 0x00..0xff)
- usa a font that is in the "NORM" as some of our customers expect DIN-ISO 
tech. drawings
- use a font that has a TrueType instance that allows text search in pdf files 
coming form kicad

I prepared a small document that compares the current hershey fonts (as used 
in kicad now) with an ISO font glyph base and an old autodesk ISO truetype 
font.

Unfortunately I cannot upload this doc but if someone is willing to do so I 
might send him the file via direct e-mail.

Thomas