Draining the font swamp

[Scott James Remnant]

On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 15:09 -0400, Phillip Susi wrote:

> How does server side fonts require more round trips?  It should amount 
> to a single message that specifies what font to use, what text to 
> render, and where.
> 
Only after a detailed exchange to determine the character-set coverage
of the font in question, and to perhaps request additional fonts to
cover those characters that are missing; then to calculate the metrics
of the font to see whether it will fit into the assigned area, and
perform word-wrapping (each requiring more metric checking round-trips).

Lots of back-and-forth.

> With client side fonts, the client has to have the fonts in the first
> place, then has to render them
> 
The server has to both of these too, so it doesn't matter which side you
put the "having" or the "rendering".

> then send them as a bitmap to the server.  If you want to do things like
> anti aliasing, then the client has to read a bitmap from the server, then
> render the font into it, then send the resulting bitmap back to the server.
> 
Not true.  This is what the Xrender extension is all about.  The client
just needs to send the rendered font, which may in fact be a series of X
protocol (or GL, etc.) drawing commands.  At the worst, it'd be a
transparent pixmap.

Just one send, regardless.

Scott
-- 
Scott James Remnant
Ubuntu Development Manager
scott at ubuntu.com
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