[sldev] Re: jira for open source fonts to be bundled with SL client

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 27-Aug-2007, at 12:18, sldev-request at lists.secondlife.com wrote:
From: Corax <corax at ravenscall.net>
> I have fonts covering unique ranges on my system (Linux) that show up
> automatically in other apps but not in SL.  Why is that?  Perhaps
> getting the viewer to use the fonts already present would be a good
> priority.

Once that works the fonts can be provided as an optional download.

X11 fonts can be handled by the display server or the application,  
and provided from a font server or a plain file. Fonts seen by the  
display server may not be visible to the application, but SL has to  
be able to make them available to OpenGL. Fonts can be in various  
formats, and native X11 font support can make these differences  
vanish... but if you have to actually interpret them yourself you can  
be stuck.

From: alissa_sabre at yahoo.co.jp (Alissa Sabre)
> Chess symbols and astrological signs should be technically easy.  We
> can simply add appropriate font file on the list.  There is a small
> problem, however.  MacOS has two font file directories; /Library/Fonts
> and /System/Library/Fonts.

Three. You need to look in ~/Library/Fonts as well.

> You called the mechanism "on-the-fly", but it is not "on-demand".  SL
> viewer tries to *load* all available font files specified in the list
> onto memory upon startup.  So, if we add a font file "Apple
> Symbols.ttf" for chess symbols, your viewr will load the font
> regardless you are actually using a chess symbol, and all other MacOS
> users' viewer will, too.

Ick. That's something that needs to be fixed.

I don't know how much of the native font support SL can use, without  
using native widgets, though.

But until that's resolved, I think this Jira probably needs to be  
closed "can't fix". Unfortunately.