Release Notes for XFree86[tm] 3.9.15
: Fonts and Internationalisation
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Next: Miscellaneous
3. Fonts and Internationalisation
Details about the font support in this version of XFree86 can be found
in the README.fonts document.
3.1. TrueType support
This version of XFree86 comes with two TrueType backends, known as
`xfsft' (the "freetype"
module) and `X-TrueType' (the
"xtt"
module). Both of these backends are based on the FreeType
library.
3.2. CID font support
Support for CID-keyed fonts is included in this version of XFree86.
The CID-keyed font format was designed by Adobe Systems for fonts with large character sets. The
CID-keyed font support in XFree86 was donated by SGI. See the LICENSE document for a copy of the CID Font Code Public
License.
3.3. Internationalisation of the scalable font backends
A new ``fontenc'' layer has been added to allow the scalable font backends
to use a common method of font re-encoding. This re-encoding makes it
possible to uses fonts in encodings other than their their native
encoding. This layer is used by the Type1 and Speedo backends and the
`xfsft' version of the TrueType backend. The `X-TrueType' version of
the TrueType backend uses a different re-encoding method based on loadable
encoding modules.
3.4. Unicode support
What is included:
- ISO 10646-1 extension of ``fixed'' BDF fonts added that cover
over 2000 characters including all Latin, Greek, Cyrillic,
Armenian, and Gregorian characters, plus numerous scientific
and technical symbols (further fonts are under preparation).
- Mark Leisher's ClearlyU proportional font (similar to Computer
Modern).
- ISO 10646/Unicode UTF-8 Level 1 support added to xterm
(enabled with the
-u8
option).
- Both the xfsft (the
"freetype"
module) and the X-TrueType
(the "xtt"
module) TrueType font backends support
Unicode-encoded fonts.
Known problems:
- Xlib does not yet support UTF-8 as a locale, which means that
xterm UTF-8 keyboard support is at the moment a temporary hack.
- ISO 10646-1 cell-spaced fonts such as ``fixed'' work nicely, but
mono-spaced and proportional fonts are handled inefficiently
by the X protocol, resulting in metrics for 64k glyphs even if
only 2000 glyphs are used.
- ISO 10646 Level 2 combining characters not yet supported by
xterm (will be needed for instance for the Thai script).
Release Notes for XFree86[tm] 3.9.15
: Fonts and Internationalisation
Previous: X libraries and clients
Next: Miscellaneous