It may yet be too early to get a definite answer about this, but I'm wondering what the status of the formerly patented bytecode interpreter in freetype will be in RHEL/Centos 6 and possibly future updates to RHEL/Centos 5.
The patent on the technology has apparently now expired. http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html and http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/07/19/1524250/FreeType-Project-Cheers-Tru...
Effective with freetype 2.4 the technology will enabled by default at the freetype website. I just checked and the version in the RHEL 6 beta appears to be 2.3.11
On Mon, 19 Jul 2010, Frank Cox wrote:
It may yet be too early to get a definite answer about this, but I'm wondering what the status of the formerly patented bytecode interpreter in freetype will be in RHEL/Centos 6 and possibly future updates to RHEL/Centos 5.
CentOS just rebuilds sources to conform to certain goals -- the 'upgrades / freshenings' request department is on a list run by the upstream
https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv6-beta-list
That said, I saw speculation picked up in a aggregator run by Infoworld <?> that the RHEL 6 stabilization was going slower than expected and that a gold by EOY was a new target date.
While this may induce a reluctance to change matters too much, a closer to the 'leaf node' package such as freetype may be 'doable' if you ask, and as I recall, RFE it in their Bugzilla; requests with working caldidates agains their public beta may also change how such a request is viewed [based upon my years of 'kremlinology' as to Raleigh]
-- Russ herrold
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 06:24 -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
While this may induce a reluctance to change matters too much, a closer to the 'leaf node' package such as freetype may be 'doable' if you ask, and as I recall, RFE it in their Bugzilla;
Upon checking the redhat bugzilla, I found that this issue has already been posted under the Fedora category:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=612395
On Tue, 20 Jul 2010, Frank Cox wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 06:24 -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
While this may induce a reluctance to change matters too much, a closer to the 'leaf node' package such as freetype may be 'doable' if you ask, and as I recall, RFE it in their Bugzilla;
Upon checking the redhat bugzilla, I found that this issue has already been posted under the Fedora category:
Reading that and the companion mentioned in the last comment, my takeaway is that fonts in fedora are (or were) bad [I trust m miller's judgment here, and have for a long time, as he is a thoughtful analyst], and that there is not much urgency in making the issue better. As I don't have the strength to follow that churn and the traffic in various venue that fedora folk use, I conclude without knowing of some un-Bugzillaed side discussion: it's not ready yet
Additionally, I see mention of ghostscript, and don't they have (or had) something like a no FOSS release until after a one year timeout from their stable releases. Time and memory may be playing tricks on me here
Finally, being filed in RawHide and in Fedora [note that no-one cared to uplift those bugs into the F14 product] is NOT going to get an RFE for RHEL 6 examined and decided, and if accepted, slotted for stabilization testing and documentation.
File the bug on that product [rhel 6/beta] as well, and explain why it would be the right thing to do, and what the needed fix are, (preferably with patches), and why taht is a low risk, high gain decision, and it will flow into CentOS faster ;)
-- Russ herrold
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 13:26 -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
File the bug on that product [rhel 6/beta] as well, and explain why it would be the right thing to do, and what the needed fix are, (preferably with patches), and why taht is a low risk, high gain decision, and it will flow into CentOS faster ;)
As you noted, it sounds like a loser at the present time due to the apparent bad fonts issue.
On 07/20/2010 10:26 AM, R P Herrold wrote:
Reading that and the companion mentioned in the last comment, my takeaway is that fonts in fedora are (or were) bad [I trust m miller's judgment here, and have for a long time, as he is a thoughtful analyst]
Which fonts? All of the fonts I use on Fedora (pretty much all the defaults) look significantly better than a default Windows desktop, and better than OS X, IMO.
Just yesterday I was looking at this: http://avi.alkalay.net/2007/01/freetype-with-bytecode-interpreter.html
The author believes that the BCI examples are much better. Some of the examples are maybe slightly better, but mostly just seem awful and jagged to me. I prefer the AA fonts, with or without BCI. Commenters appear to largely agree with me.
I'm sure that opinions vary, but I really don't think fonts on Fedora are bad.
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 12:46 -0700, Gordon Messmer wrote:
Which fonts? All of the fonts I use on Fedora (pretty much all the defaults) look significantly better than a default Windows desktop, and better than OS X, IMO.
See the discussion here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=547532
I have never managed to compile the Centos freetype srpm with the bytecode interpreter enabled.
http://www.mail-archive.com/centos@centos.org/msg45631.html
On 07/20/2010 12:57 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 12:46 -0700, Gordon Messmer wrote:
Which fonts? All of the fonts I use on Fedora (pretty much all the defaults) look significantly better than a default Windows desktop, and better than OS X, IMO.
See the discussion here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=547532
That's the one I mentioned a moment ago: BCI made one of Matthew Miller's fonts worse. It was perfectly fine with the auto-hinter.
On Tue, 20 Jul 2010, Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 07/20/2010 10:26 AM, R P Herrold wrote:
Reading that and the companion mentioned in the last comment, my takeaway is that fonts in fedora are (or were) bad [I trust m miller's judgment here, and have for a long time, as he is a thoughtful analyst]
Which fonts?
read the bugs -- I just summarised, and for the reasons stated in the prior post
-- Russ herrold
On 07/20/2010 01:06 PM, R P Herrold wrote:
read the bugs -- I just summarised, and for the reasons stated in the prior post
I did. The bug you linked to said nothing about any specific font. It referenced another bug in RH Bugzilla where Matthew Miller complained that freetype with BCI enabled made his fonts *worse*.
So which fonts on Fedora are "bad"?
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Frank Cox -
Gordon Messmer -
R P Herrold