1 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.10 and 2.1.9
5 - The size comparison for BDF and PCF files could fail sometimes.
7 - Some CFF files were still not loaded correctly. Patch from
10 - The stroker still had some serious bugs.
12 - Boris Letocha fixed a bug in the TrueType interpreter: The
13 NPUSHW instruction wasn't skipped correctly in IF clauses. Some
14 fonts like `Helvetica 75 Bold' failed.
16 - Another serious bug in handling TrueType hints caused many
17 distortions. It has been introduced in version 2.1.8, and it is
18 highly recommended to upgrade.
20 - FreeType didn't properly parse empty Type 1 glyphs.
22 - An unbound dynamic buffer growth was fixed in the PFR loader.
24 - Several bugs have been fixed in the cache sub-system.
26 - FreeType behaved incorrectly when resizing two distinct but very
27 close character pixel sizes through `FT_Set_Char_Size' (Savannah
30 - The auto-hinter didn't work properly for fonts without a Unicode
31 charmap -- it even refused to load the glyphs.
36 - Many fixes have been applied to drastically reduce the amount of
37 heap memory used by FreeType, especially when using
38 memory-mapped font files (which is the default on Unix systems
41 - The auto-hinter has been replaced with a new module, called the
42 `auto-fitter'. It consumes less memory than its predecessor,
43 and it is prepared to support non-latin scripts better in next
46 - George Williams contributed code to read kerning data from PFM
49 - FreeType now uses the TT_NAME_ID_PREFERRED_FAMILY and
50 TT_NAME_ID_PREFERRED_SUBFAMILY strings (if available) for
51 setting family and style in SFNT fonts (patch from Kornfeld
54 - A new API `FT_Sfnt_Table_Info' (in FT_TRUETYPE_TABLES_H) has
55 been added to retrieve name and size information of SFNT tables.
57 - A new API `FT_OpenType_Validate' (in FT_OPENTYPE_VALIDATE_H) has
58 been added to validate OpenType tables (BASE, GDEF, GPOS, GSUB,
59 JSTF). After validation it is no longer necessary to check
60 for errors in those tables while accessing them.
62 Note that this module might be moved to another library in the
63 future to avoid a tight dependency between FreeType and the
64 OpenType specification.
66 - A new API in FT_BITMAP_H (`FT_Bitmap_New', `FT_Bitmap_Convert',
67 `FT_Bitmap_Copy', `FT_Bitmap_Embolden', `FT_Bitmap_Done') has
68 been added. Its use is to convert an FT_Bitmap structure in
69 1bpp, 2bpp, 4bpp, or 8bpp format into another 8bpp FT_Bitmap,
70 probably using a different pitch, and to further manipulate it.
72 - A new API `FT_Outline_Embolden' (in FT_OUTLINE_H) gives finer
73 control how outlines are embolded.
75 - `FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden' (in FT_SYNTHESIS_H) now handles bitmaps
76 also (code contributed by Chia I Wu). Note that this function
77 is still experimental and may be replaced with a better API.
79 - The method how BDF and PCF bitmap fonts are accessed has been
80 refined. Formerly, FT_Set_Pixel_Sizes and FT_Set_Char_Size
81 were synonyms in FreeType's BDF and PCF interface. This has
82 changed now. FT_Set_Pixel_Sizes should be used to select the
83 actual font dimensions (the `strike', which is the sum of the
84 `FONT_ASCENT' and `FONT_DESCENT' properties), while
85 FT_Set_Char_Size selects the `nominal' size (the `PIXELSIZE'
86 property). In both functions, the width parameter is ignored.
91 - The BDF driver no longer converts all returned bitmaps with a
92 depth of 2bpp or 4bpp to a depth of 8bpp. The documentation has
93 not mentioned this explicitly, but implementors might have
94 relied on this after looking into the source files.
96 - A new option `--ftversion' has been added to freetype-config to
97 return the FreeType version.
99 - The memory debugger has been updated to dump allocation
100 statistics on all allocation sources in the library. This is
101 useful to spot greedy allocations when loading and processing
104 - We removed a huge array of constant pointers to constant strings
105 in the `psnames' module. The problem was that compilations in
106 PIC mode (i.e., when generating a Unix shared object/dll) put
107 the array into the non-shared writable section of the library
108 since absolute pointers are not relocatable by nature.
110 This reduces the memory consumption by approximately 16KByte per
111 process linked to FreeType. We now also store the array in a
112 compressed form (as a trie) which saves about 20KByte of code as
115 - Kirill Smelkov provided patches to make src/raster/ftraster.c
116 compile stand-alone again.
119 ======================================================================
121 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.9 and 2.1.8
123 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
125 - The function `FT_Get_CharMap_Index' was only declared, without
126 any real code. For consistency, it has been renamed to
127 `FT_Get_Charmap_Index'. (This function is needed to implement
130 - `FT_Outline_Get_BBox' sometimes returned incorrect values for
131 conic outlines (e.g., for TrueType fonts).
133 - Handling of `bhed' table has been fixed.
135 - The TrueType driver with enabled byte code interpreter sometimes
136 returned artifacts due to incorrect rounding. This bug has been
137 introduced after version 2.1.4.
139 - The BDF driver dropped the last glyph in the font.
141 - The BDF driver now uses the DEFAULT_CHAR property (if available)
142 to select a glyph shape for the undefined glyph.
144 - The stroker failed for closed outlines and single points.
147 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
149 - George Williams contributed code to handle Apple's font
150 distortion technology found in GX fonts (`avar', `cvar', `fvar',
151 and `gvar' tables; the Multiple Masters API has been slightly
152 extended to cope with the new functionality).
154 - The `FT_GlyphSlotRec' structure has been extended: The elements
155 `lsb_delta' and `rsb_delta' give the difference between hinted
156 and unhinted left and right side bearings if autohinting is
157 active. Using those values can improve the inter-letter spacing
158 considerably. See the documentation of `FT_GlyphSlotRec' and
159 the `ftstring' demo program how to use it.
161 - Loading TrueType and Type 1 fonts has been made much faster.
163 - The stroker is no longer experimental (but the cache subsystem
169 - A new documentation file `formats.txt' describes various font
170 formats supported (and not supported) by FreeType.
173 ======================================================================
175 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.8 and 2.1.7
177 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
179 - The native TrueType hinter contained some bugs which prevented
180 some fonts to be rendered correctly, most notably Legendum.otf.
182 - The PostScript hinter now produces improved results.
184 - The linear advance width and height values were incorrectly
185 rounded, making them virtually unusable if not loaded with
186 FT_LOAD_LINEAR_DESIGN.
188 - Indexing CID-keyed CFF fonts is now working: The glyph index is
189 correctly treated as a CID, similar to FreeType's CID driver
190 module. Note that CID CMap support is still missing.
192 - The FT_FACE_FLAGS_GLYPH_NAMES flag is now set correctly for all
195 - Some subsetted Type 1 fonts weren't parsed correctly. This bug
196 has been introduced in 2.1.7. In summary, the Type 1 parser has
199 - Non-decimal numbers weren't parsed correctly in PS fonts.
201 - The WinFNT driver now correctly reports FT_ENCODING_NONE for all
202 but one encoding. Use the new FT_WinFNT_ID_XXX values together
203 with FT_Get_WinFNT_Header() to get the WinFNT charset ID.
205 - The descender metrics (face->size->metrics.descender) for WinFNT
206 bitmap fonts had the wrong sign.
208 - The (emulated) `seac' support for CFF fonts was broken.
210 - The `flex' operator didn't work for CFF fonts.
212 - PS glyphs which use the `hintmask' operator haven't been
213 rendered correctly in some cases.
215 - Metrics for BDF and PCF bitmap font formats have been fixed.
217 - Autohinting is now disabled for glyphs which are vertically
218 distorted or mirrored (using a transformation matrix). This
219 fixes a bug which produced zero-height glyphs.
221 - The `freetype-config' script now handles --prefix and
222 --exec-prefix correctly; it also returns the proper --rpath (or
223 -R) value if FreeType has been built as a shared library.
226 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
228 - Both PCF and BDF drivers now handle the SETWIDTH_NAME and
229 ADD_STYLE_NAME properties. Values are appended to
230 face->style_name; example: `Bold SemiCondensed'.
232 - The PCF driver now handles bitmap fonts compressed with the LZW
233 algorithm (extension .pcf.Z, compressed with `compress').
235 - A new API function `FT_Get_CMap_Language_ID' (declared in
236 `tttables.h') is available to get the language ID of a
239 - The hexadecimal format of data after the `StartData' command in
240 CID-keyed Type 1 fonts is now supported. While this can't occur
241 in file-based fonts, it can happen in document-embedded
242 resources of PostScript documents.
244 - Embedded bitmaps in SFNT-based CFF fonts are now supported.
246 - A simple API is now available to control FreeType's tracing
247 mechanism if compiled with FT_DEBUG_LEVEL_TRACE. See the file
248 `ftdebug.h' for more details.
250 - YAMATO Masatake contributed improved handling of MacOS resource
251 forks on non-MacOS platforms (for example, Linux can mount MacOS
254 - Support for MacOS has been improved; there is now a new function
255 `FT_New_Face_From_FSSpec' similar to `FT_New_Face' except that
256 it accepts an FSSpec instead of a path.
258 - The cache sub-system has been rewritten.
260 - There is now support for deinstallation of faces.
262 - A new API function `FTC_Manager_RemoveFaceID' has been added
263 to delete all `idle' nodes that correspond to a given
264 FTC_FaceID. All `locked' nodes (i.e., those with a reference
265 count > 0), will be modified to prevent them from appearing in
266 further lookups (they will be cleaned normally when their
267 reference count reaches 0).
269 - There is now support for point scaling (i.e., providing
270 character sizes in points + dpis, instead of pixels).
272 - Three abstract cache classes are now available:
274 FTC_GCache: Used to store one glyph item per cache node,
275 with the ability to group common attributes into
276 `families'. This replaces the old
277 FTC_GlyphCache class.
279 FTC_ICache: Used to store one FT_Glyph per cache node. This
280 extends FTC_GCache. Family definition, family
281 comparison, and glyph loading are however left
284 FTC_SCache: Used to store up to 16 small bitmaps per cache
285 node. This extends FTC_GCache. Family
286 definition, family comparison and glyph loading
287 are however left to sub-classes.
289 - The file `src/cache/ftcbasic.c' implements:
291 FTC_ImageCache: Extends FTC_ICache; implements family
292 definitions and glyph loading similar to the
295 FTC_SBitCache: Extends FTC_SCache, implements family
296 definitions and glyph loading similar to the
299 Client applications should be able to extend FTC_GCache,
300 FTC_ICache, or FTC_SCache much more easily (i.e., less code to
301 write, and less callbacks). For example, one could envision
302 caches that are capable of storing transformed (obliqued),
303 stroked, emboldened, or colored glyph images. Use
304 `ftcbasic.c' as an example.
306 - All public APIs are now in `include/freetype/ftcache.h', (to
307 be accessed as `FT_CACHE_H'). The contents of
308 `include/freetype/cache/' is only needed by applications that
309 wish to implement their own caches.
311 - There were some major performance improvements through the use
312 of various programming tricks. Cache hits are up to 70%
313 faster than in the old code.
315 - The FTC_CMapCache has been simplied. Charmaps can only be
316 accessed by index right now. There is also a new API named
317 `FT_Charmap_GetIndex' for this purpose.
319 - The demo programs have been updated to the new code. The
320 previous versions will not work with the current one.
322 - Using an invalid face index in FT_Open_Face and friends now
323 causes an error even if the font contains a single face only.
328 - Wolfgang Domröse contributed support files for building FreeType
329 on the Atari using the PureC compiler. Note that the Atari is a
332 - Vitaliy Pasternak contributed project files for VS.NET 2003.
335 ======================================================================
337 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.7 and 2.1.6
339 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
341 - Updated to newest libtool version, fixing build problems on
344 - On Unix platforms, `make install' didn't copy the correct
347 Note that version 2.1.7 contains the same library C source code as
351 ======================================================================
353 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.6 and 2.1.5
355 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
357 - The PFR font driver didn't load kerning tables correctly, and
358 the functions in FT_PFR_H didn't work at all.
360 - Type 1 font files in binary format (PFB) with an end-of-file
361 indicator weren't accepted by the FreeType engine.
363 - Fonts which contain /PaintType and /StrokeWidth no longer cause
364 a segfault. This bug has been introduced in version 2.1.5.
366 - Fonts loaded with FT_LOAD_RENDER no longer cause strange
367 results. This bug has been introduced in version 2.1.5.
369 - Some Windows (bitmap) FNT/FON files couldn't be handled
373 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
375 - The internal module API has been heavily changed in favor of
376 massive simplifications within the font engine. This also means
377 that authors of third-party modules must adapt their code to the
380 NOTE: THE NEW SCHEME IS NOT COMPLETED YET. PLEASE WAIT UNTIL A
383 - The PostScript parser has been enhanced to handle comments and
384 strings correctly. Additionally, more syntax forms are
387 - Added the optional unpatented hinting system for TrueType. It
388 allows typefaces which need hinting to produce correct glyph
389 forms (e.g., Chinese typefaces from Dynalab) to work acceptably
390 without infringing Apple patents. This system is compiled only
391 if TT_CONFIG_OPTION_COMPILE_UNPATENTED_HINTING is defined in
392 ftoption.h (activated by default).
397 - There is now a guard in the public header files to protect
398 against inclusion of freetype.h from FreeType 1.
400 - Direct inclusion of freetype.h and other public header files no
401 longer works. You have to use the documented scheme
403 #include <ft2build.h>
404 #include FT_FREETYPE_H
406 to load freetype.h with a symbolic name. This protects against
407 renaming of public header files (which shouldn't happen but
408 actually has, avoiding two public header files with the same
412 ======================================================================
414 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.5 and 2.1.4
416 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
418 - Parsing the /CIDFontName field now removes the leading slash to
419 be in sync with other font drivers.
421 - gzip support was buggy. Some fonts could not be read.
423 - Fonts which have nested subglyphs more than one level deep no
424 longer cause a segfault.
426 - Creation of synthetic cmaps for fonts in CFF format was broken
429 - Numeric font dictionary entries for synthetic fonts are no
432 - The font matrix wasn't applied to the advance width for Type1,
433 CID, and CFF fonts. This caused problems when loading certain
434 synthetic Type 1 fonts like `Helvetica Narrow'.
436 - The test for the charset registry in BDF and PCF fonts is now
439 - FT_Vector_Rotate sometimes returned strange values due to
442 - The PCF driver now returns the correct number of glyphs
443 (including an artificial `notdef' glyph at index 0).
445 - FreeType now supports buggy CMaps which are contained in many
446 CJK fonts from Dynalab.
448 - Opening an invalid font on a Mac caused a segfault due to
449 double-freeing memory.
451 - BDF fonts with more than 32768 glyphs weren't supported
455 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
457 - Accessing bitmap font formats has been synchronized. To do that
458 the FT_Bitmap_Size structure has been extended to contain new
459 fields `size', `x_ppem', and `y_ppem'.
461 - The FNT driver now returns multiple faces, not multiple strikes.
463 - The `psnames' module has been updated to the Adobe Glyph List
466 - The `psnames' module now understands `uXXXX[X[X]]' glyph names.
468 - The algorithm for guessing the font style has been improved.
470 - For fonts in SFNT format, root->height is no longer increased if
471 the line gap is zero. There exist fonts (containing e.g. form
472 drawing characters) which intentionally have a zero line gap
475 - ft_glyph_bbox_xxx flags are now deprecated in favour of
478 - ft_module_xxx flags are now deprecated in favour of
481 - FT_ENCODING_MS_{SJIS,GB2312,BIG5,WANSUNG,JOHAB} are now
482 deprecated in favour of
483 FT_ENCODING_{SJIS,GB2312,GIB5,WANSONG,JOHAB} -- those encodings
484 are not specific to Microsoft.
489 - The autohinter has been further improved; for example, `m'
490 glyphs now retain its vertical symmetry.
492 - Partial support of Mac fonts on non-Mac platforms.
494 - `make refdoc' (after first `make') builds the HTML
495 documentation. You need Python for this.
497 - The make build system should now work more reliably on DOS-like
500 - Support for EMX gcc and Watson C/C++ compilers on MS-DOS has
503 - Better VMS build support.
505 - Support for the pkg-config package by providing a `freetype.pc'
508 - New configure option --with-old-mac-fonts for Darwin.
510 - Some source files have been renamed (mainly to fit into the 8.3
514 ======================================================================
516 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.4 and 2.1.3
518 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
520 - Updated to newest libtool version, fixing build problems on
523 - A fix in the Gzip stream reader: It couldn't read certain .gz
524 files properly due to a small typo. In certain cases, FreeType
525 could also loop endlessly when trying to load tiny gzipped
528 - The configure script now tries to use the system-wide zlib when
529 it finds one (instead of the copy found in src/gzip). And
530 "freetype-config" has been updated to return relevant flags in
531 this case when invoked with "--libs" (e.g. "-lzlib").
533 - Certain fonts couldn't be loaded by 2.1.3 because they lacked a
534 Unicode charmap (e.g. SYMBOL.TTF). FreeType erroneously
537 - The CFF loader was modified to accept fonts which only contain a
538 subset of their reference charset. This prevented the correct
539 use of PDF-embedded fonts.
541 - The logic to detect Unicode charmaps has been modified. This is
542 required to support fonts which include both 16-bit and 32-bit
543 charmaps (like very recent asian ones) using the new 10 and 12
546 - The TrueType loader now limits the depth of composite glyphs.
547 This is necessary to prevent broken fonts to break the engine by
548 blowing the stack with recursive glyph definitions.
550 - The CMap cache is now capable of managing UCS-4 character codes
551 that are mapped through extended charmaps in recent
552 TrueType/OpenType fonts.
554 - The cache sub-system now properly manages out-of-memory
555 conditions instead of blindly reporting them to the caller.
556 This means that it will try to empty the cache before restarting
557 its allocations to see if that can help.
559 - The PFR driver didn't return the list of available embedded
562 - There was a nasty memory leak when using embedded bitmaps in
563 certain font formats.
566 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
568 - David Chester contributed some enhancements to the auto-hinter
569 that significantly increase the quality of its output. The
570 Postscript hinter was also improved in several ways.
572 - The FT_RENDER_MODE_LIGHT render mode was implemented.
574 - A new API function called `FT_Get_BDF_Property' has been added
575 to FT_BDF_H to retrieve BDF properties from BDF _and_ PCF font
576 files. THIS IS STILL EXPERIMENTAL, since it hasn't been
579 - A Windows FNT specific API has been added, mostly to access font
580 headers. This is used by Wine.
582 - TrueType tables without an "hmtx" table are now tolerated when
583 an incremental interface is used. This happens for certain
584 Type42 fonts passed from Ghostscript to FreeType.
586 - The PFR font driver is now capable of returning the font family
587 and style names when they are available (instead of the sole
588 "FontID"). This is performed by parsing an *undocumented*
589 portion of the font file!
594 - The path stroker in FT_STROKER_H has entered beta stage. It now
595 works very well, but its interface might change a bit in the
596 future. More on this in later releases.
598 - The documentation for FT_Size_Metrics didn't appear properly in
601 - The file docs/VERSION.DLL has been updated to explain versioning
602 with FreeType (i.e., comparing release/libtool/so numbers, and
603 how to use them in autoconf scripts).
605 - The installation documentation has been seriously revamped.
606 Everything is now in the "docs" directory.
609 ======================================================================
611 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.3 and 2.1.2
613 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
615 - FT_Vector_Transform had been incorrectly modified in 2.1.2,
616 resulting in incorrect transformations being applied (for
617 example, rotations were processed in opposite angles).
619 - The format 8 and 12 TrueType charmap enumeration routines have
620 been fixed (FT_Get_Next_Char returned invalid values).
622 - The PFR font driver returned incorrect advance widths if the
623 outline and metrics resolution defined in the font file were
626 - FT_Glyph_To_Bitmap now returns successfully when called with an
627 FT_BitmapGlyph argument (it previously returned an error).
629 - A bug in the Type 1 loader that prevented valid font bounding
630 boxes to be loaded from multiple master fonts.
632 - The SFNT validation code has been rewritten. FreeType can now
633 load "broken" fonts that were usable on Windows, but not with
634 previous versions of the library.
636 - The computation of bearings in the BDF driver has been fixed.
638 - The Postscript hinter crashed when trying to hint certain glyphs
639 (more precisely, when trying to apply hints to an empty glyph
642 - The TrueType glyph loader now supports composites in "Apple
643 format" (they differ slightly from Microsoft/OpenType ones in
644 the way transformation offsets are computed).
646 - FreeType was very slow at opening certain asian CID/CFF fonts,
647 due to fixed increment in dynamic array re-allocations. This
648 has been changed to exponential behaviour to get acceptable
653 II. IMPORTANT CHANGES
655 - The PCF driver now supports gzip-compressed font files natively.
656 This means that you will be able to use all these bitmap fonts
657 that come with XFree86 with FreeType (and libXft/libXft2, by
660 - The automatic and postscript hinters have both been updated.
661 This results in a relatively important increase of rendering
662 quality since many nasty defaults have been supressed. Please
665 http://www.freetype.org/hinting/smooth-hinting.html
667 for additional details on this topic.
669 - The "load_flags" parameter of FT_Load_Glyph is now an FT_Int32
670 (instead of just being an FT_Int). This breaks source and
671 binary compatibility for 16bit systems only, while retaining
672 both of them for 32 and 64 bit ones.
674 Some new flags have been added consequently:
676 FT_LOAD_NO_AUTOHINT :: Disable the use of the auto-hinter
677 (but not native format hinters).
679 FT_LOAD_TARGET_NORMAL :: Hint and render for normal
680 anti-aliased displays.
682 FT_LOAD_TARGET_MONO :: Hint and render for 1-bit displays.
684 FT_LOAD_TARGET_LCD :: Hint and render for horizontal RGB or
685 BGR sub-pixel displays (like LCD
686 screens). THIS IS STILL
689 FT_LOAD_TARGET_LCD_V :: Same as FT_LOAD_TARGET_LCD, for
690 vertical sub-pixel displays (like
691 rotated LCD screens). THIS IS STILL
694 FT_LOAD_MONOCHROME is still supported, but only affects
695 rendering, not the hinting.
697 Note that the `ftview' demo program available in the `ft2demos'
698 package has been updated to support LCD-optimized display on
699 non-paletted displays (under Win32 and X11).
701 - The PFR driver now supports embedded bitmaps (all formats
702 supported), and returns correct kerning metrics for all glyphs.
704 - The TrueType charmap loader now supports certain `broken' fonts
705 that load under Windows without problems.
707 - The cache API has been slightly modified (it's still a beta!):
709 - The type FTC_ImageDesc has been removed; it is now replaced
710 by FTC_ImageTypeRec. Note that one of its fields is a
711 `load_flag' parameter for FT_Load_Glyph.
713 - The field "num_grays" of FT_SBitRec has been changed to
714 "max_grays" in order to fit within a single byte. Its
715 maximum value is thus 255 (instead of 256 as previously).
720 - Added support for the DESTDIR variable during "make install".
721 This simplifies packaging of FreeType.
723 - Included modified copies of the ZLib sources in `src/gzip' in
724 order to support gzip-compressed PCF fonts. We do not use the
725 system-provided zlib for now, though this is a probable
726 enhancement for future releases.
728 - The DocMaker tool used to generate the on-line API reference has
729 been completely rewritten. It is now located in
730 "src/tools/docmaker/docmaker.py". Features:
732 - better cross-referenced output
733 - more polished output
734 - uses Python regular expressions (though it didn't speed the
736 - much more modular structure, which allows for different
737 "backends" in order to generate HTML, XML, or whatever
740 One can regenerate the API reference by calling:
742 python src/tools/docmaker/docmaker.py \
744 --title=FreeType-2.1.3 \
745 --output=<outputdirectory>
746 include/freetype/*.h \
747 include/freetype/config/*.h \
748 include/freetype/cache/*.h
750 - A new, experimental, support for incremental font loading (i.e.,
751 loading of fonts where the glyphs are not in the font file
752 itself, but provided by an external component, like a Postscript
753 interpreter) has been added by Graham Asher. This is still work
754 in progress, however.
756 - A new, EXPERIMENTAL, path stroker has been added. It doesn't
757 suffer from severe rounding errors and treat bezier arcs
758 directly. Still work in progress (i.e. not part of the official
759 API). See the file <freetype/ftstroker.h> for some of the
762 - The massive re-formatting of sources and internal re-design is
763 still under-way. Many internal functions, constants, and types
767 ======================================================================
769 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.2 and 2.1.1
771 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
773 - Many font drivers didn't select a Unicode charmap by default
774 when a new face was opened (with the FT_CONFIG_OPTION_USE_CMAPS
775 options enabled), causing many applications to not be able to
776 display text correctly with the 2.1.x releases.
778 - The PFR driver had a bug in its composite loading code that
779 produces incorrectly placed accents with many fonts.
781 - The Type42 driver crashed sometimes due to a nasty bug.
783 - The Type 1 custom encoding charmap didn't handle the case where
784 the first glyph index wasn't 0.
786 - A serious typo in the TrueType composite loader produced
787 incorrectly placed glyphs in fonts like "Wingdings" and a few
793 - The Win32 Visual C++ project file has been updated to include
794 the PFR driver as well.
796 - "freetype.m4" is now installed by default by "make install" on
799 - The function FT_Get_PS_Font_Info now works with CID and Type42
803 ======================================================================
805 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.1 and 2.1.0
807 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
809 - The `version_info' returned by `freetype-config' in 2.1.0
810 returned an invalid value. It now returns 9:1:3 (2.0.9 returned
813 - Version 2.1.0 couldn't be linked against applications on Win32
814 and Amiga systems due to a new debug function that wasn't
815 properly propagated to the system-specific directory in
818 - Various MacOS and Mac OS X specific fixes.
820 - Fixed a bug in the TrueType charmap validation routines that
821 made version 2.1.0 too restrictive -- many popular fonts have
824 - There was still a very small difference between the monochrome
825 glyph bitmaps produced by FreeType 1.x and FreeType 2.x with the
826 bytecode interpreter enabled. This was caused by an invalid
827 flag setting in the TrueType glyph loader, making the rasterizer
828 change its drop-out control mode. Now theresults should
829 _really_ be completely identical.
831 - The TrueType name table loader has been improved to support many
832 popular though buggy Asian fonts. It now ignores empty name
833 entries, invalid pointer offsets and a few other incorrect
834 subtleties. Moreover, name strings are now loaded on demand,
835 which reduces the memory load of many faces (e.g. the ARIAL.TTF
836 font file contains a 10kByte name table with 70 names).
838 - Fixed a bug in the Postscript hinter that prevented family blues
839 substitution to happen correctly.
844 - Three new font drivers in this release:
846 * A BDF font driver, contributed by Franco Zappa Nardelli,
847 heavily modified by Werner Lemberg. It also supports
848 anti-aliased bitmaps (using a slightly extended BDF format).
850 * A Type42 font driver, contributed by Roberto Alameda. It is
851 still experimental but seems to work relatively well.
853 * A PFR font driver, contributed by David Turner himself. It
854 doesn't support PFR hinting -- note that BitStream has at
855 least two patents on this format!
860 - The cache sub-system has been optimized in important ways.
861 Cache hits are now significantly faster. For example, using the
862 CMap cache is about twice faster than calling FT_Get_Char_Index
863 on most platforms. Similarly, using an SBit cache is about five
864 times faster than loading the bitmaps from a bitmap file, and
865 300 to 500 times faster than generating them from a scalable
868 Note that you should recompile your sources if you designed a
869 custom cache class for the FT2 Cache subsystem, since the
870 changes performed are source, but not binary, compatible.
873 ======================================================================
875 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.1.0 and 2.0.9
877 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
879 - The TrueType bytecode interpreter has been fixed to produce
880 _exactly_ the same output as FreeType 1.x. Previous differences
881 were due to slightly distinct fixed-point computation routines
882 used to perform dot products and vector length measurements.
884 It seems that native TrueType hinting is _extremely_ sensitive
885 to rounding errors. The required vector computation routines
886 have been optimized and placed within the "ttinterp.c" file.
888 - Fixed the parsing of accelerator tables in the PCF font driver.
890 - Fixed the Type1 glyph loader routine used to compute the font's
891 maximum advance width.
896 - The `configure' script used on Unix systems has been modified to
897 check that GNU Make is being used to build the library.
898 Otherwise, it will display a message proposing to use the
899 GNUMAKE environment variable to name it.
901 The Unix-specific file README.UNX has been modified accordingly.
906 - The FreeType License in `docs/FTL.TXT' has been updated to
907 include a proposed preferred disclaimer. If you are using
908 FreeType in your products, you are encouraged (but not mandated)
909 to use the following text in your documentation:
912 Portions of this software are copyright © 1996-2002 The
913 FreeType Project (www.freetype.org). All rights reserved.
916 - The default size of the render pool has been reduced to 16kByte.
917 This shouldn't result in any noticeable performance penalty,
918 unless you are using the engine as-is to render very large and
921 - The FreeType 2 redesign has begun. More information can be
924 http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/redesign.html
926 The following internal changes have been performed within the
927 sources of this release:
929 - Many internal types have been renamed to increase
930 consistency. The following should be true, except for
933 * All structure types have a name ending in "Rec" (short
936 * A pointer-to-structure type has the same name as the
937 structure, _without_ the "Rec" suffix.
941 typedef struct FooRec_
947 - Many internal macros have been renamed to increase
948 consistency. The following should be true:
950 * All macros have a name beginning with "FT_". This
951 required a few changes like
955 REALLOC => FT_REALLOC
957 * All macros are completely UPPERCASE. This required a
960 READ_Short => FT_READ_SHORT
961 NEXT_Short => FT_NEXT_SHORT
962 GET_ULongLE => FT_GET_ULONG_LE
963 MEM_Set => FT_MEM_SET
964 MEM_Copy => FT_MEM_COPY
967 * Whenever possible, all macro names follow the
968 FT_<OBJECT>_<METHOD> pattern. For example
970 ACCESS_Frame => FT_FRAME_ENTER
971 FORGET_Frame => FT_FRAME_EXIT
972 EXTRACT_Frame => FT_FRAME_EXTRACT
973 RELEASE_Frame => FT_FRAME_RELEASE
975 FILE_Pos => FT_STREAM_POS
976 FILE_Seek => FT_STREAM_SEEK
977 FILE_Read => FT_STREAM_READ
978 FILE_ReadAt => FT_STREAM_READ_AT
979 READ_Fields => FT_STREAM_READ_FIELDS
981 - Many internal functions have been renamed to follow the
982 FT_<Object>_<Method> pattern. For example:
984 FT_Seek_Stream => FT_Stream_Seek
985 FT_Read_Stream_At => FT_Stream_ReadAt
986 FT_Done_Stream => FT_Stream_Close
987 FT_New_Stream => FT_Stream_Open
988 FT_New_Memory_Stream => FT_Stream_OpenMemory
989 FT_Extract_Frame => FT_Stream_ExtractFrame
991 Note that method names do not contain "_".
993 - The FT_ALLOC_ARRAY and FT_REALLOC_ARRAY have been replaced
994 with FT_NEW_ARRAY and FT_RENEW_ARRAY which do not take a
995 type as the fourth argument. Instead, the array element
996 type size is computed automatically from the type of the
999 - A new object class, FT_CMap, has been introduced. These
1000 internal objects are used to model character maps. This
1001 eases the support of additional charmap types within the
1004 - A new configuration file named "ftstdlib.h" has been added
1005 to `include/freetype/config'. It is used to define aliases
1006 for _every_ routine of the ISO C library that the font
1007 engine uses. Each aliases has a "ft_" prefix
1008 (e.g. "ft_strlen" is an alias for "strlen").
1010 This is used to ease the porting of FreeType 2 to exotic
1011 runtime environments where the ISO C Library isn't available
1012 (e.g. XFree86 extension modules).
1014 More details are available in the "ChangeLog" file.
1017 ======================================================================
1019 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.9 and 2.0.8
1021 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
1023 - Certain fonts like "foxjump.ttf" contain broken name tables with
1024 invalid entries and wild offsets. This caused FreeType to crash
1025 when trying to load them.
1027 The SFNT `name' table loader has been fixed to be able to
1028 support these strange fonts.
1030 Moreover, the code in charge of processing this table has been
1031 changed to always favour Windows-formatted entries over other
1032 ones. Hence, a font that works on Windows but not on the Mac
1033 will load cleanly in FreeType and report accurate values for
1034 Family & PostScript names.
1036 - The CID font driver has been fixed. It unfortunately returned a
1037 Postscript Font name with a leading slash, as in
1038 "/MunhwaGothic-Regular".
1040 - FreeType 2 should now compile fine on AIX 4.3.3 as a shared
1043 - A bug in the Postscript hinter has been found and fixed,
1044 removing un-even stem widths at small pixel sizes (like 14-17).
1046 This improves the quality of a certain number of Postscript
1052 - A new function named `FT_Library_Version' has been added to
1053 return the current library's major, minor, and patch version
1054 numbers. This is important since the macros FREETYPE_MAJOR,
1055 FREETYPE_MINOR, and FREETYPE_PATCH cannot be used when the
1056 library is dynamically linked by a program.
1058 - Two new APIs have been added: `FT_Get_First_Char' and
1061 Together, these can be used to iterate efficiently over the
1062 currently selected charmap of a given face. Read the API
1063 reference for more details.
1068 - The FreeType sources are under heavy internal re-factoring. As
1069 a consequence, we have created a branch named "STABLE" on the
1070 CVS to hold all future releases/fixes in the 2.0.x family.
1072 The HEAD branch now contains the re-factored sources and
1073 shouldn't be used for testing or packaging new releases. In
1074 case you would like to access the 2.0.9 sources from our CVS
1075 repository, use the tag `VER-2-0-9'.
1078 ======================================================================
1080 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.8 and 2.0.7
1082 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
1084 - There was a small but nasty bug in "freetype-config.in" which
1085 caused the "freetype-config" script to fail on Unix.
1087 This didn't prevent the installation of the library or even its
1088 execution, but caused problems when trying to compile many Unix
1089 packages that depend on it.
1091 - Some TrueType or OpenType fonts embedded in PDF documents do not
1092 have a 'cmap', 'post' and 'name' as is required by the
1093 specification. FreeType no longer refuses to load such fonts.
1095 - Various fixes to the PCF font driver.
1098 ======================================================================
1100 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.7 and 2.0.6
1102 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
1104 - Fixed two bugs in the Type 1 font driver. The first one
1105 resulted in a memory leak in subtle cases. The other one caused
1106 FreeType to crash when trying to load ".gsf" files (Ghostscript
1107 so-called Postscript fonts).
1109 (This made _many_ KDE applications crash on certain systems.
1110 FreeType _is_ becoming a critical system component on Linux :-)
1112 - Fixed a memory leak in the CFF font driver.
1114 - Fixed a memory leak in the PCF font driver.
1116 - Fixed the Visual C++ project file
1117 "builds/win32/visualc/freetype.dsp" since it didn't include the
1118 Postscript hinter component, causing errors at build time.
1120 - Fixed a small rendering bug in the anti-aliased renderer that
1121 only occurred when trying to draw thin (less than 1 pixel)
1124 - Fixed "builds/unix/freetype2.a4" which is used to generate a
1125 valid "freetype2.m4" for use with autoconf.
1127 - Fixed the OpenVMS Makefiles.
1132 - Added "configure" and "install" scripts to the top-level
1133 directory. A GNU-style installation is thus now easily possible
1136 ./configure <options>
1141 ======================================================================
1143 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.6 and 2.0.5
1145 I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES
1147 - It wasn't possible to load embedded bitmaps when the auto-hinter
1148 was used. This is now fixed.
1150 - The TrueType font driver didn't load some composites properly
1151 (the sub-glyphs were slightly shifted, and this was only
1152 noticeable when using monochrome rendering).
1154 - Various fixes to the auto-hinter. They merely improve the
1155 output of sans-serif fonts. Note that there are still problems
1156 with serifed fonts and composites (accented characters).
1158 - All scalable font drivers erroneously returned un-fitted glyph
1159 advances when hinting was requested. This created problems for
1160 a number of layout applications. This is a very old bug that
1161 got undetected mainly because most test/demo program perform
1162 rounding explicitly or implicitly (through the cache).
1164 - FT_Glyph_To_Bitmap() did erroneously modify the source glyph in
1167 - "glnames.py" still contained a bug that made FreeType return
1168 invalid names for certain glyphs.
1170 - The library crashed when loading certain Type 1 fonts like
1171 "sadn.pfb" ("Stalingrad Normal"), which appear to contain
1172 pathetic font info dictionaries.
1174 - The TrueType glyph loader is now much more paranoid and checks
1175 everything when loading a given glyph image. This was necessary
1176 to avoid problems (crashes and/or memory overwrites) with broken
1177 fonts that came from a really buggy automatic font converter.
1180 II. IMPORTANT UPDATES AND NEW FEATURES
1182 - Important updates to the Mac-specific parts of the library.
1184 - The caching sub-system has been completely re-designed, and its
1185 API has evolved (the old one is still supported for backwards
1188 The documentation for it is not yet completed, sorry. For now,
1189 you are encouraged to continue using the old API. However, the
1190 ftview demo program in the ft2demos package has already been
1191 updated to use the new caching functions.
1193 - A new charmap cache is provided too. See FTC_CMapCache(). This
1194 is useful to perform character code -> glyph index translations
1195 quickly, without the need for an opened FT_Face.
1197 - A NEW POSTSCRIPT HINTER module has been added to support native
1198 hints in the following formats: PostScript Type 1, PostScript
1201 Please test! Note that the auto-hinter produces better results
1202 for a number of badly-hinted fonts (mostly auto-generated ones)
1205 - A memory debugger is now part of the standard FreeType sources.
1206 To enable it, define FT_DEBUG_MEMORY in
1207 <freetype/config/ftoption.h>, and recompile the library.
1209 Additionally, define the _environment_ variable FT_DEBUG_MEMORY
1210 and run any program using FreeType. When the library is exited,
1211 a summary of memory footprints and possible leaks will be
1214 This works transparently with _any_ program that uses FreeType.
1215 However, you will need a lot of memory to use this (allocated
1216 blocks are never released to the heap to detect double deletes
1222 - We are aware of subtle differences between the output of
1223 FreeType versions 1 and 2 when it comes to monochrome
1224 TrueType-hinted glyphs. These are most probably due to small
1225 differences in the monochrome rasterizers and will be worked out
1226 in an upcoming release.
1228 - We have decided to fork the sources in a "stable" branch, and an
1229 "unstable" one, since FreeType is becoming a critical component
1230 of many Unix systems.
1232 The next bug-fix releases of the library will be named 2.0.7,
1233 2.0.8, etc., while the "2.1" branch will contain a version of
1234 the sources where we will start major reworking of the library's
1235 internals, in order to produce FreeType 2.2.0 (or even 3.0) in a
1236 more distant future.
1238 We also hope that this scheme will allow much more frequent
1239 releases than in the past.
1242 ======================================================================
1244 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.5 and 2.0.4
1246 NOTE THAT 2.0.5 DOES NOT CONTAIN THE POSTSCRIPT HINTER. THIS MODULE
1247 WILL BE PART OF THE NEXT RELEASE (EITHER 2.0.6 or 2.1)
1249 - Fixed a bug that made certain glyphs, like "Cacute", "cacute" and
1250 "lslash" unavailable from Unicode charmaps of Postscript fonts.
1251 This prevented the correct display of Polish text, for example.
1253 - The kerning table of Type 1 fonts was loaded by FreeType, when its
1254 AFM file was attached to its face, but the
1255 FT_FACE_FLAG_HAS_KERNING bit flags was not set correctly,
1256 preventing FT_Get_Kerning to return meaningful values.
1258 - Improved SFNT (TrueType & OpenType) charmap support. Slightly
1259 better performance, as well as support for the new formats defined
1260 by the OpenType 1.3 specification (8, 10, and 12)
1262 - Fixed a serious typo in "src/base/ftcalc.c" which caused invalid
1263 computations in certain rare cases, producing ugly artefacts.
1265 - The size of the EM square is computed with a more accurate
1266 algorithm for Postscript fonts. The old one caused slight errors
1267 with embedded fonts found in PDF documents.
1269 - Fixed a bug in the cache manager that prevented normal LRU
1270 behaviour within the cache manager, causing unnecessary reloads
1271 (for FT_Face and FT_Size objects only).
1273 - Added a new function named "FT_Get_Name_Index" to retrieve the
1274 glyph index of a given glyph name, when found in a face.
1276 - Added a new function named "FT_Get_Postscript_Name" to retrieve
1277 the "unique" Postscript font name of a given face.
1279 - Added a new public header size named FT_SIZES_H (or
1280 <freetype/ftsizes.h>) providing new FT_Size-management functions:
1281 FT_New_Size, FT_Activate_Size, FT_Done_Size.
1283 - Fixed a reallocation bug that generated a dangling pointer (and
1284 possibly memory leaks) with Postscript fonts (in
1285 src/psaux/psobjs.c).
1287 - Many fixes for 16-bit correctness.
1289 - Removed many pedantic compiler warnings from the sources.
1291 - Added an Amiga build directory in "builds/amiga".
1294 ======================================================================
1296 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.4 and 2.0.3
1298 - Fixed a rather annoying bug that was introduced in 2.0.3. Namely,
1299 the font transformation set through FT_Set_Transform was applied
1300 twice to auto-hinted glyphs, resulting in incorrectly rotated text
1303 - Fixed _many_ compiler warnings. FT2 should now compile cleanly
1304 with Visual C++'s most pedantic warning level (/W4). It already
1305 compiled fine with GCC and a few other compilers.
1307 - Fixed a bug that prevented the linear advance width of composite
1308 TrueType glyphs to be correctly returned.
1310 - Fixed the Visual C++ project files located in
1311 "builds/win32/visualc" (previous versions used older names of the
1314 - Many 32-bit constants have an "L" appended to their value, in
1315 order to improve the 16-bitness of the code. Someone is actually
1316 trying to use FT2 on an Atari ST machine!
1318 - Updated the "builds/detect.mk" file in order to automatically
1319 build FT2 on AIX systems. AIX uses "/usr/sbin/init" instead of
1320 "/sbin/init" and wasn't previously detected as a Unix platform by
1321 the FreeType build system.
1323 - Updated the Unix-specific portions of the build system (new
1324 libtool version, etc.).
1326 - The SFNT kerning lodaer now ensures that the table is sorted
1327 (since some problem fonts do not meet this requirement).
1330 =======================================================================
1332 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.3 and 2.0.2
1334 I. CHANGES TO THE MODULES / FONT DRIVERS
1336 - THE AUTO-HINTER HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY IMPROVED, in order to fix
1337 several annoying artefacts, mainly:
1339 - Blue zone alignement of horizontal stems wasn't performed
1340 correctly, resulting in artefacts like the "d" being placed
1341 one pixel below the "b" in some fonts like Time New Roman.
1343 - Overshoot thresholding wasn't performed correctly, creating
1344 unpleasant artefacts at large character pixel sizes.
1346 - Composite glyph loading has been simplified. This gets rid
1347 of various artefacts where the components of a composite
1348 glyphs were not correctly spaced.
1350 These are the last changes to the current auto-hinting module.
1351 A new hinting sub-system is currently in the work in order to
1352 support native hints in Type 1 / CFF / OpenType fonts, as well
1353 as globally improve rendering.
1355 - The PCF driver has been fixed. It reported invalid glyph
1356 dimensions for the fonts available on Solaris.
1358 - The Type 1, CID and CFF drivers have been modified to fix the
1359 computation of the EM size.
1361 - The Type 1 driver has been fixed to avoid a dangerous bug that
1362 crashed the library with non-conforming fonts (i.e. ones that do
1363 not place the .notdef glyph at position 0).
1365 - The TrueType driver had a rather subtle bug (dangling pointer
1366 when loading composite glyphs) that could crash the library in
1370 II. HIGH-LEVEL API CHANGES
1372 - The error code enumeration values have been changed. An error
1373 value is decomposed in a generic error code, and a module
1374 number. see <freetype/fterrors.h> for details.
1376 - A new public header file has been introduced, named
1377 FT_TRIGONOMETRY_H (include/freetype/fttrig.h), providing
1378 trigonometric functions to compute sines, cosines, arctangents,
1379 etc. with 16.16 fixed precision. The implementation is based on
1380 the CORDIC algorithm and is very fast while being sufficiently
1386 - Added BeOS-specific files in the old build sub-system. Note
1387 that no changes were required to compile the library with Jam.
1389 - The configuration is now capable of automatically detecting
1390 64-bit integers on a set of predefined compilers (GCC, Visual
1391 C++, Borland C++) and will use them by default. This provides a
1392 small performance boost.
1394 - A small memory leak that happened when opening 0-sized files
1395 (duh!) have been fixed.
1397 - Fixed bezier stack depth bug in the routines provided by the
1398 FT_BBOX_H header file. Also fixed similar bugs in the
1401 - The outline bounding box code has been rewritten to use direct
1402 computations, instead of bezier sub-division, to compute the
1403 exact bounding box of glyphs. This is slightly slower but more
1406 - The build system has been improved and fixed, mainly to support
1407 "make" on Windows 2000 correctly, avoid problems with "make
1408 distclean" on non Unix systems, etc.
1410 - Hexadecimal constants have been suffixed with "U" to avoid
1411 problems with certain compilers on 64-bit platforms.
1413 - A new directory named "src/tools" has been created. It contains
1414 Python scripts and simple unit test programs used to develop the
1417 - The DocMaker tool has been moved from "docs" to "src/tools" and
1418 has been updated with the following:
1420 - Now accepts the "--title=XXXX" or "-t XXXX" option from the
1421 command line to set the project's name in the generated API
1424 - Now accepts the "--output=DIR" or "-o DIR" option from the
1425 command line to set the output directory for all generated
1428 - Now accepts the "--prefix=XXXX" or "-p XXX" option from the
1429 command line to set the file prefix to use for all
1430 generated HTML files.
1432 - Now generates the current time/data on each generated page
1433 in order to distinguish between versions.
1435 DocMaker can be used with other projects now, not only FT2
1436 (e.g. MLib, FTLayout, etc.).
1439 ======================================================================
1441 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.2 and 2.0.1
1443 I. CHANGES TO THE MODULES / FONT DRIVERS
1445 - THE TRUETYPE BYTECODE INTERPRETER IS NOW TURNED OFF, in order to
1446 avoid legal problems with the Apple patents. It seems that we
1447 mistakenly turned this option on in previous releases of the
1450 Note that if you want to use the bytecode interpreter in order
1451 to get high-quality TrueType rendering, you will need to toggle
1452 by hand the definition of the
1453 TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER macro in the file
1454 "include/freetype/config/ftoption.h".
1456 - The CFF driver has been improved by Tom Kacvinsky and Sander van
1459 * Support for "seac" emulation.
1460 * Support for "dotsection".
1461 * Support for retrieving glyph names through
1462 "FT_Get_Glyph_Name".
1464 The first two items are necessary to correctly a large number of
1465 Type 1 fonts converted to the CFF formats by Adobe Acrobat.
1467 - The Type 1 driver was also improved by Tom & others:
1469 * Better EM size computation.
1470 * Better support for synthetic (transformed) fonts.
1471 * The Type 1 driver returns the charstrings corresponding to
1472 each glyph in the "glyph->control_data" field after a call to
1473 "FT_Load_Glyph" (thanks Ha Shao).
1475 - Various other bugfixes, including the following:
1477 * Fixed a nasty memory leak in the Type 1 driver.
1478 * The autohinter and the pcf driver used static writable data
1479 when they shouldn't.
1480 * Many casts were added to make the code more 64-bits safe. It
1481 also now compiles on Windows XP 64-bits without warnings.
1482 * Some incorrect writable statics were removed in the "autohint"
1483 and "pcf" drivers. FreeType 2 now compiles on Epoc again.
1486 II. CHANGES TO THE HIGH-LEVEL API
1488 - The library header files inclusion scheme has been changed. The
1489 old scheme looked like:
1491 #include <freetype/freetype.h>
1492 #include <freetype/ftglyph.h>
1493 #include <freetype/ftcache.h>
1494 #include <freetype/cache/ftimage.h>
1498 #include <ft2build.h>
1499 #include FT_FREETYPE_H
1502 #include FT_CACHE_IMAGE_H
1504 NOTE THAT THE OLD INCLUSION SCHEME WILL STILL WORK WITH THIS
1505 RELEASE. HOWEVER, WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT THIS WILL STILL BE
1506 TRUE IN THE NEXT ONE (A.K.A. FREETYPE 2.1).
1508 The file <ft2build.h> is used to define the header filename
1509 macros. The complete and commented list of macros is available
1510 in the API reference under the section name "Header File Macros"
1513 For more information, see section I of the following document:
1515 http://www.freetype.org/
1516 freetype2/docs/tutorial/step1.html
1520 http://freetype.sourceforge.net/
1521 freetype2/docs/tutorial/step1.html
1523 - Many, many comments have been added to the public source file in
1524 order to automatically generate the API Reference through the
1525 "docmaker.py" Python script.
1527 The latter has been updated to support the grouping of sections
1528 in chapters and better index sort. See:
1530 http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/reference/ft2-toc.html
1533 III. CHANGES TO THE BUILD PROCESS
1535 - If you are not building FreeType 2 with its own build system
1536 (but with your own Makefiles or project files), you will need to
1537 be aware that the build process has changed a little bit.
1539 You don't need to put the "src" directory in the include path
1540 when compiling any FT2 component. Instead, simply put the
1541 component's directory in the current include path.
1543 So, if you were doing something like:
1545 cc -c -Iinclude -Isrc src/base/ftbase.c
1549 cc -c -Iinclude -Isrc/base src/base/ftbase.c
1551 If you were doing something like:
1554 cc -c -I../../include -I.. ftbase.c
1559 cc -c -I../../include ftbase.c
1562 ======================================================================
1564 LATEST CHANGES BETWEEN 2.0.1 and 2.0
1566 2.0.1 introduces a few changes:
1568 - Fixed many bugs related to the support of CFF / OpenType fonts.
1569 These formats are now much better supported though there is
1570 still work planned to deal with charset tables and PDF-embedded
1571 CFF files that use the old "seac" command.
1573 - The library could not be compiled in debug mode with a very
1574 small number of C compilers whose pre-processors didn't
1575 implement the "##" directive correctly (i.e. per se the ANSI C
1576 specification!) An elegant fix was found.
1578 - Added support for the free Borland command-line C++ Builder
1579 compiler. Use "make setup bcc32". Also fixed a few source
1580 lines that generated new warnings with BCC32.
1582 - Fixed a bug in FT_Outline_Get_BBox when computing the extrema of
1585 - Updated the INSTALL file to add IDE compilation.
1587 - Other minor bug fixes, from invalid Type 1 style flags to
1588 correct support of synthetic (obliqued) fonts in the
1589 auto-hinter, better support for embedded bitmaps in a SFNT font.
1591 - Fixed some problems with "freetype-config".
1593 Finally, the "standard" scheme for including FreeType headers is now
1594 gradually changing, but this will be explained in a later release
1597 And very special thanks to Tom Kacvinsky and YAMANO-UCHI Hidetoshi
1598 for their contributions!
1601 ======================================================================
1603 CHANGES BETWEEN beta8 and 2.0
1605 - Changed the default installation path for public headers from
1606 "include/freetype" to "include/freetype2".
1608 Also added a new "freetype-config" that is automatically generated
1609 and installed on Unix and Cygwin systems. The script itself is
1610 used to retrieve the current install path, C compilation flags as
1611 well as linker flags.
1613 - Fixed several small bugs:
1615 * Incorrect max advance width for fixed-pitch Type 1 fonts.
1616 * Incorrect glyph names for certain TrueType fonts.
1617 * The glyph advance was not copied when FT_Glyph_To_Bitmap was
1619 * The linearHoriAdvance and linerVertAdvance fields were not
1620 correctly returned for glyphs processed by the auto-hinter.
1621 * "type1z" renamed back to "type1"; the old "type1" module has
1624 - Revamped the build system to make it a lot more generic. This
1625 will allow us to re-use nearly un-modified in lots of other
1626 projects (including FreeType Layout).
1628 - Changed "cid" to use "psaux" too.
1630 - Added the cache sub-system. See <freetype/ftcache.h> as well as
1631 the sources in "src/cache". Note that it compiles but is still
1634 - Updated "docs/docmaker.py", a draft API reference is available at
1635 http://www.freetype.org/ft2api.html.
1637 - Changed "type1" to use "psaux".
1639 - Created a new module named "psaux" to hold the Type 1 & Type 2
1640 parsing routines. It should be used by "type1", "cid", and "cff"
1643 - Fixed an important bug in "FT_Glyph_Get_CBox".
1645 - Fixed some compiler warnings that happened since the TrueType
1646 bytecode decoder was deactivated by default.
1648 - Fixed two memory leaks:
1650 * The memory manager (16 bytes) isn't released in
1652 * Using custom input streams, the copy of the original stream was
1655 - Fixed the auto-hinter by performing automatic computation of the
1656 "filling direction" of each glyph. This is done through a simple
1657 and fast approximation, and seems to work (problems spotted by
1658 Werner though). The Arphic fonts are a lot nicer though there are
1659 still a lot of things to do to handle Asian fonts correctly.
1662 ======================================================================
1664 BETA-8 (RELEASE CANDIDATE) CHANGES
1666 - Deactivated the TrueType bytecode interpreter by default.
1668 - Deactivated the "src/type1" font driver. Now "src/type1z" is used
1671 - Updates to the build system. We now compile the library correctly
1672 under Unix system through "configure" which is automatically
1673 called on the first "make" invocation.
1675 - Added the auto-hinting module! Fixing some bugs here and there.
1677 - Found some bugs in the composite loader (seac) of the Type1-based
1680 - Renamed the directory "freetype2/config" to "freetype2/builds" and
1681 updated all relevant files.
1683 - Found a memory leak in the "type1" driver.
1685 - Incorporated Tom's patches to support flex operators correctly in
1686 OpenType/CFF fonts. Now all I need is to support pure CFF and CEF
1687 fonts to be done with this driver :-)
1689 - Added the Windows FNT/FON driver in "src/winfonts". For now, it
1690 always "simulates" a Unicode charmap, so it shouldn't be
1691 considered completed right now.
1693 It is there to be more a proof of concept than anything else
1694 anyway. The driver is a single C source file, that compiles to 3
1697 I'm still working on the PCF/BDF drivers, but I'm too lazy to
1700 - CHANGES TO THE HIGH-LEVEL API
1702 * FT_Get_Kerning has a new parameter that allows you to select the
1703 coordinates of the kerning vector (font units, scaled, scaled +
1705 * The outline functions are now in <freetype/ftoutln.h> and not
1706 part of <freetype/freetype.h> anymore.
1707 * <freetype/ftmodule.h> now contains declarations for
1708 FT_New_Library, FT_Done_Library, FT_Add_Default_Modules.
1709 * The so-called convenience functions have moved from "ftoutln.c"
1710 to "ftglyph.c", and are thus available with this optional
1711 component of the library. They are declared in
1712 <freetype/ftglyph.h> now.
1713 * Anti-aliased rendering is now the default for FT_Render_Glyph
1714 (i.e. corresponds to render_mode == 0 == ft_render_mode_normal).
1715 To generate a monochrome bitmap, use ft_render_mode_mono, or the
1716 FT_LOAD_MONOCHROME flag in FT_Load_Glyph/FT_Load_Char.
1717 FT_LOAD_ANTI_ALIAS is still defined, but values to 0.
1718 * <freetype/freetype.h> now include <freetype/config/ftconfig.h>,
1719 solving a few headaches :-)
1720 * The type FT_GlyphSlotRec has now a "library" field.
1722 - CHANGES TO THE "ftglyph.h" API
1724 This API has been severely modified in order to make it simpler,
1725 clearer, and more efficient. It certainly now looks like a real
1726 "glyph factory" object, and allows client applications to manage
1727 (i.e. transform, bbox and render) glyph images without ever
1728 knowing their original format.
1730 - Added support for CID-keyed fonts to the CFF driver. Maybe
1731 support for pure CFF + CEF fonts should come in?
1733 - Cleaned up source code in order to avoid two functions with the
1734 same name. Also changed the names of the files in "type1z" from
1735 "t1XXXX" to "z1XXXX" in order to avoid any conflicts.
1737 "make multi" now works well :-)
1739 Also removed the use of "cidafm" for now, even if the source files
1740 are still there. This functionality will certainly go into a
1743 - ADDED SUPPORT FOR THE AUTO-HINTER
1745 It works :-) I have a demo program which simply is a copy of
1746 "ftview" that does a `FT_Add_Module(library,
1747 &autohinter_module_class)' after library initialization, and Type
1748 1 & OpenType/CFF fonts are now hinted.
1750 CID fonts are not hinted, as they include no charmap and the
1751 auto-hinter doesn't include "generic" global metrics computations
1754 Now, I need to release this thing to the FreeType 2 source.
1756 - CHANGES TO THE RENDERER MODULES
1758 The monochrome and smooth renderers are now in two distinct
1759 directories, namely "src/raster1" and "src/smooth". Note that the
1760 old "src/renderer" is now gone.
1762 I ditched the 5-gray-levels renderers. Basically, it involved a
1763 simple #define toggle in 'src/raster1/ftraster.c'.
1765 FT_Render_Glyph, FT_Outline_Render & FT_Outline_Get_Bitmap now
1766 select the best renderer available, depending on render mode. If
1767 the current renderer for a given glyph image format isn't capable
1768 of supporting the render mode, another one will be found in the
1769 library's list. This means that client applications do not need
1770 to switch or set the renderers themselves (as in the latest
1771 change), they'll get what they want automatically. At last.
1773 Changed the demo programs accordingly.
1775 - MAJOR INTERNAL REDESIGN:
1777 A lot of internal modifications have been performed lately on the
1778 source in order to provide the following enhancements:
1780 * More generic module support:
1782 The FT_Module type is now defined to represent a handle to a
1783 given module. The file <freetype/ftmodule.h> contains the
1784 FT_Module_Class definition, as well as the module-loading public
1787 The FT_Driver type is still defined, and still represents a
1788 pointer to a font driver. Note that FT_Add_Driver is replaced
1789 by FT_Add_Module, FT_Get_Driver by FT_Get_Module, etc.
1791 * Support for generic glyph image types:
1793 The FT_Renderer type is a pointer to a module used to perform
1794 various operations on glyph image.
1796 Each renderer is capable of handling images in a single format
1797 (e.g. ft_glyph_format_outline). Its functions are used to:
1799 - transform an glyph image
1800 - render a glyph image into a bitmap
1801 - return the control box (dimensions) of a given glyph image
1803 The scan converters "ftraster.c" and "ftgrays.c" have been moved
1804 to the new directory "src/renderer", and are used to provide two
1805 default renderer modules.
1807 One corresponds to the "standard" scan-converter, the other to
1810 he current renderer can be set through the new function
1813 The old raster-related function FT_Set_Raster, FT_Get_Raster and
1814 FT_Set_Raster_Mode have now disappeared, in favor of the new:
1819 See the file <freetype/ftrender.h> for more details.
1821 These changes were necessary to properly support different
1822 scalable formats in the future, like bi-color glyphs, etc.
1824 * Glyph loader object:
1826 A new internal object, called a 'glyph loader' has been
1827 introduced in the base layer. It is used by all scalable format
1828 font drivers to load glyphs and composites.
1830 This object has been created to reduce the code size of each
1831 driver, as each one of them basically re-implemented its
1834 See <freetype/internal/ftobjs.h> and the FT_GlyphLoader type for
1837 * FT_GlyphSlot has new fields:
1839 In order to support extended features (see below), the
1840 FT_GlyphSlot structure has a few new fields:
1844 This field gives the linearly scaled (i.e. scaled but
1845 unhinted) advance width for the glyph, expressed as a 16.16
1846 fixed pixel value. This is useful to perform WYSIWYG text.
1849 This field gives the linearly scaled advance height for the
1850 glyph (relevant in vertical glyph layouts only). This is
1851 useful to perform WYSIWYG text.
1853 Note that the two above field replace the removed "metrics2"
1854 field in the glyph slot.
1857 This field is a vector that gives the transformed advance for
1858 the glyph. By default, it corresponds to the advance width,
1859 unless FT_LOAD_VERTICAL_LAYOUT was specified when calling
1860 FT_Load_Glyph or FT_Load_Char.
1863 This field gives the distance in integer pixels from the
1864 current pen position to the left-most pixel of a glyph image
1865 IF IT IS A BITMAP. It is only valid when the "format" field
1866 is set to "ft_glyph_format_bitmap", for example, after calling
1867 the new function FT_Render_Glyph.
1870 This field gives the distance in integer pixels from the
1871 current pen position (located on the baseline) to the top-most
1872 pixel of the glyph image IF IT IS A BITMAP. Positive values
1873 correspond to upwards Y.
1876 This is a new private field for the glyph slot. Client
1877 applications should not touch it.
1880 * Support for transforms and direct rendering in FT_Load_Glyph:
1882 Most of the functionality found in <freetype/ftglyph.h> has been
1883 moved to the core library. Hence, the following:
1885 - A transform can be specified for a face through
1886 FT_Set_Transform. this transform is applied by FT_Load_Glyph
1887 to scalable glyph images (i.e. NOT TO BITMAPS) before the
1888 function returns, unless the bit flag FT_LOAD_IGNORE_TRANSFORM
1889 was set in the load flags.
1891 - Once a glyph image has been loaded, it can be directly
1892 converted to a bitmap by using the new FT_Render_Glyph
1893 function. Note that this function takes the glyph image from
1894 the glyph slot, and converts it to a bitmap whose properties
1895 are returned in "face.glyph.bitmap", "face.glyph.bitmap_left"
1896 and "face.glyph.bitmap_top". The original native image might
1897 be lost after the conversion.
1899 - When using the new bit flag FT_LOAD_RENDER, the FT_Load_Glyph
1900 and FT_Load_Char functions will call FT_Render_Glyph
1901 automatically when needed.
1903 - Reformatted all modules source code in order to get rid of the
1904 basic data types redifinitions (i.e. "TT_Int" instead of "FT_Int",
1905 "T1_Fixed" instead of "FT_Fixed"). Hence the format-specific
1906 prefixes like "TT_", "T1_", "T2_" and "CID_" are only used for
1907 relevant structures.
1910 ======================================================================
1912 OLD CHANGES FOR BETA 7
1914 - bug-fixed the OpenType/CFF parser. It now loads and displays my
1915 two fonts nicely, but I'm pretty certain that more testing is
1918 - fixed the crummy Type 1 hinter, it now handles accented characters
1919 correctly (well, the accent is not always well placed, but that's
1922 - added the CID-keyed Type 1 driver in "src/cid". Works pretty well
1923 for only 13 Kb of code ;-) Doesn't read AFM files though, nor the
1924 really useful CMAP files..
1926 - fixed two bugs in the smooth renderer (src/base/ftgrays.c).
1927 Thanks to Boris Letocha for spotting them and providing a fix.
1929 - fixed potential "divide by zero" bugs in ftcalc.c.
1931 - added source code for the OpenType/CFF driver (still incomplete
1934 - modified the SFNT driver slightly to perform more robust header
1935 checks in TT_Load_SFNT_Header. This prevents certain font files
1936 (e.g. some Type 1 Multiple Masters) from being incorrectly
1937 "recognized" as TrueType font files..
1939 - moved a lot of stuff from the TrueType driver to the SFNT module,
1940 this allows greater code re-use between font drivers
1941 (e.g. TrueType, OpenType, Compact-TrueType, etc..)
1943 - added a tiny segment cache to the SFNT Charmap 4 decoder, in order
1944 to minimally speed it up..
1946 - added support for Multiple Master fonts in "type1z". There is
1947 also a new file named <freetype/ftmm.h> which defines functions to
1948 manage them from client applications.
1950 The new file "src/base/ftmm.c" is also optional to the engine..
1952 - various formatting changes (e.g. EXPORT_DEF -> FT_EXPORT_DEF) +
1953 small bug fixes in FT_Load_Glyph, the "type1" driver, etc..
1955 - a minor fix to the Type 1 driver to let them apply the font matrix
1956 correctly (used for many oblique fonts..)
1958 - some fixes for 64-bit systems (mainly changing some FT_TRACE calls
1959 to use %p instead of %lx). Thanks to Karl Robillard.
1961 - fixed some bugs in the sbit loader (src/base/sfnt/ttsbit.c) +
1962 added a new flag, FT_LOAD_CROP_BITMAP to query that bitmaps be
1963 cropped when loaded from a file (maybe I should move the bitmap
1964 cropper to the base layer ??).
1966 - changed the default number of gray levels of the smooth renderer
1967 to 256 (instead of the previous 128). Of course, the human eye
1968 can't see any difference ;-)
1970 - removed TT_MAX_SUBGLYPHS, there is no static limit on the number
1971 of subglyphs in a TrueType font now..
1974 ======================================================================
1976 OLD CHANGES 16 May 2000
1978 - tagged "BETA-6" in the CVS tree. This one is a serious release
1979 candidate even though it doesn't incorporate the auto-hinter yet..
1981 - various obsolete files were removed, and copyright header updated
1983 - finally updated the standard raster to fix the monochrome
1984 rendering bug + re-enable support for 5-gray levels anti-aliasing
1987 - created new header files, and modified sources accordingly:
1989 <freetype/fttypes.h>
1990 - simple FreeType types, without the API
1991 <freetype/internal/ftmemory.h>
1992 - definition of memory-management macros
1994 - added the "DSIG" (OpenType Digital Signature) tag to
1997 - light update/cleaning of the build system + changes to the sources
1998 in order to get rid of _all_ compiler warnings with three
2001 gcc with "-ansi -pedantic -Wall -W", Visual C++ with "/W3 /WX" and
2004 IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WIN32-LCC USERS:
2006 | It seems the C pre-processor that comes with LCC is broken, it
2007 | doesn't recognize the ANSI standard directives # and ##
2008 | correctly when one of the argument is a macro. Also,
2011 | #define F(x) print##x
2015 | will get incorrectly translated to:
2019 | by its pre-processor. For this reason, you simply cannot build
2020 | FreeType 2 in debug mode with this compiler..
2022 - yet another massive grunt work. I've changed the definition of
2023 the EXPORT_DEF, EXPORT_FUNC, BASE_DEF & BASE_FUNC macros. These
2024 now take an argument, which is the function's return value type.
2026 This is necessary to compile FreeType as a DLL on Windows and
2027 OS/2. Depending on the compiler used, a compiler-specific keyword
2028 like __export or __system must be placed before (VisualC++) or
2029 after (BorlandC++) the type..
2031 Of course, this needed a lot of changes throughout the source code
2032 to make it compile again... All cleaned up now, apparently..
2034 Note also that there is a new EXPORT_VAR macro defined to allow
2035 the _declaration_ of an exportable public (constant)
2036 variable. This is the case of the raster interfaces (see
2037 ftraster.h and ftgrays.h), as well as each module's interface (see
2038 sfdriver.h, psdriver.h, etc..)
2040 - new feature: it is now possible to pass extra parameters to font
2041 drivers when creating a new face object. For now,
2042 this capability is unused. It could however prove to
2043 be useful in a near future..
2045 the FT_Open_Args structure was changes, as well as the internal
2046 driver interface (the specific "init_face" module function has
2047 now a different signature).
2049 - updated the tutorial (not finished though).
2051 - updated the top-level BUILD document
2053 - fixed a potential memory leak that could occur when loading
2056 - added the declaration of FT_New_Memory_Face in
2057 <freetype/freetype.h>, as it was missing from the public header
2058 (the implementation was already in "ftobjs.c").
2060 - the file <freetype/fterrors.h> has been seriously updated in order
2061 to allow the automatic generation of error message tables. See
2062 the comments within it for more information.
2064 - major directory hierarchy re-organisation. This was done for two
2067 * first, to ease the "manual" compilation of the library by
2068 requiring at lot less include paths :-)
2070 * second, to allow external programs to effectively access
2071 internal data fields. For example, this can be extremely
2072 useful if someone wants to write a font producer or a font
2073 manager on top of FreeType.
2075 Basically, you should now use the 'freetype/' prefix for header
2078 #include <freetype/freetype.h>
2079 #include <freetype/ftglyph.h>
2081 Some new include sub-directories are available:
2083 a. the "freetype/config" directory, contains two files used to
2084 configure the build of the library. Client applications
2085 should not need to look at these normally, but they can if
2088 #include <freetype/config/ftoption.h>
2089 #include <freetype/config/ftconfig.h>
2091 b. the "freetype/internal" directory, contains header files that
2092 describes library internals. These are the header files that
2093 were previously found in the "src/base" and "src/shared"
2097 As usual, the build system and the demos have been updated to
2098 reflect the change..
2100 Here's a layout of the new directory hierarchy:
2129 Compiling a module is now much easier, for example, the following
2130 should work when in the TOP_DIR directory on an ANSI build:
2132 gcc -c -I./include -I./src/base src/base/ftbase.c
2133 gcc -c -I./include -I./src/sfnt src/sfnt/sfnt.c
2136 (of course, using -Iconfig/<system> if you provide system-specific
2137 configuration files).
2139 - updated the structure of FT_Outline_Funcs in order to allow direct
2140 coordinate scaling within the outline decomposition routine (this
2141 is important for virtual "on" points with TrueType outlines) +
2142 updates to the rasters to support this..
2144 - updated the OS/2 table loading code in "src/sfnt/ttload.c" in
2145 order to support version 2 of the table (see OpenType 1.2 spec)
2147 - created "include/tttables.h" and "include/t1tables.h" to allow
2148 client applications to access some of the SFNT and T1 tables of a
2149 face with a procedural interface (see FT_Get_Sfnt_Table()) +
2150 updates to internal source files to reflect the change..
2152 - some cleanups in the source code to get rid of warnings when
2153 compiling with the "-Wall -W -ansi -pedantic" options in gcc.
2155 - debugged and moved the smooth renderer to "src/base/ftgrays.c" and
2156 its header to "include/ftgrays.h"
2158 - updated TT_MAX_SUBGLYPHS to 96 as some CJK fonts have composites
2159 with up to 80 sub-glyphs !! Thanks to Werner
2162 ======================================================================
2164 OLD CHANGES - 14-apr-2000
2166 - fixed a bug in the TrueType glyph loader that prevented the
2167 correct loading of some CJK glyphs in mingli.ttf
2169 - improved the standard Type 1 hinter in "src/type1"
2171 - fixed two bugs in the experimental Type 1 driver in "src/type1z"
2172 to handle the new XFree86 4.0 fonts (and a few other ones..)
2174 - the smooth renderer is now complete and supports sub-banding to
2175 render large glyphs at high speed. However, it is still located
2176 in "demos/src/ftgrays.c" and should move to the library itself in
2177 the next beta. NOTE: The smooth renderer doesn't compile in
2178 stand-alone mode anymore, but this should be fixed RSN..
2180 - introduced convenience functions to more easily deal with glyph
2181 images, see "include/ftglyph.h" for more details, as well as the
2182 new demo program named "demos/src/ftstring.c" that demonstrates
2185 - implemented FT_LOAD_NO_RECURSE in both the TrueType and Type 1
2186 drivers (this is required by the auto-hinter to improve its
2189 - changed the raster interface, in order to allow client
2190 applications to provide their own span-drawing callbacks.
2191 However, only the smooth renderer supports this. See
2192 "FT_Raster_Params" in the file "include/ftimage.h".
2194 - fixed a small bug in FT_MulFix that caused incorrect transform
2197 - Note: The tutorial is out-of-date.
2200 ======================================================================
2202 OLD CHANGES - 12-mar-2000
2204 - changed the layout of configuration files : now, all ANSI
2205 configuration files are located in
2206 "freetype2/config". System-specific over-rides can be placed in
2207 "freetype2/config/<system>".
2209 - moved all configuration macros to "config/ftoption.h"
2211 - improvements in the Type 1 driver with AFM support
2213 - changed the fields in the FT_Outline structure : the old "flags"
2214 array is re-named "tags", while all ancient flags are encoded into
2215 a single unsigned int named "flags".
2217 - introduced new flags in FT_Outline.flags (see
2218 ft_outline_.... enums in "ftimage.h").
2220 - changed outline functions to "FT_Outline_<action>" syntax
2222 - added a smooth anti-alias renderer to the demonstration programs
2224 - added Mac graphics driver (thanks Just)
2226 - FT_Open_Face changed in order to received a pointer to a
2227 FT_Open_Args descriptor..
2229 - various cleanups, a few more API functions implemented (see
2235 ======================================================================
2237 OLD CHANGES - 22-feb-2000
2239 - introduced the "psnames" module. It is used to:
2241 o convert a Postscript glyph name into the equivalent Unicode
2242 character code (used by the Type 1 driver(s) to synthetize on
2243 the fly a Unicode charmap).
2245 o provide an interface to retrieve the Postscript names of the
2246 Macintosh, Adobe Standard & Adobe Expert character codes.
2247 (the Macintosh names are used by the SFNT-module postscript
2248 names support routines, while the other two tables are used by
2249 the Type 1 driver(s)).
2251 - introduced the "type1z" alternate Type 1 driver. This is a (still
2252 experimental) driver for the Type 1 format that will ultimately
2253 replace the one in "src/type1". It uses pattern matching to load
2254 data from the font, instead of a finite state analyzer. It works
2255 much better than the "old" driver with "broken" fonts. It is also
2256 much smaller (under 15 Kb).
2258 - the Type 1 drivers (both in "src/type1" and "src/type1z") are
2259 nearly complete. They both provide automatic Unicode charmap
2260 synthesis through the "psnames" module. No re-encoding vector is
2261 needed. (note that they still leak memory due to some code
2262 missing, and I'm getting lazy).
2264 Trivial AFM support has been added to read kerning information but
2265 wasn't exactly tested as it should ;-)
2267 - The TrueType glyph loader has been seriously rewritten (see the
2268 file "src/truetype/ttgload.c". It is now much, much simpler as
2269 well as easier to read, maintain and understand :-) Preliminary
2270 versions introduced a memory leak that has been reported by Jack
2271 Davis, and is now fixed..
2273 - introduced the new "ft_glyph_format_plotter", used to represent
2274 stroked outlines like Windows "Vector" fonts, and certain Type 1
2275 fonts like "Hershey". The corresponding raster will be written
2278 - FT_New_Memory_Face is gone. Likewise, FT_Open_Face has a new
2279 interface that uses a structure to describe the input stream, the
2280 driver (if required), etc..
2285 - Write FT_Get_Glyph_Bitmap and FT_Load_Glyph_Bitmap
2287 - Add a function like FT_Load_Character( face, char_code, load_flags
2288 ) that would really embbed a call to FT_Get_Char_Index then
2289 FT_Load_Glyph to ease developer's work.
2291 - Update the tutorial!
2293 - consider adding support for Multiple Master fonts in the Type 1
2296 - Test the AFM routines of the Type 1 drivers to check that kerning
2297 information is returned correctly.
2299 - write a decent auto-gridding component !! We need this to release
2305 - add a CFF/Type2 driver
2307 - add a FNT/PCF/HBF driver
2308 - add a Speedo driver from the X11 sources
2311 ======================================================================
2313 OLDER CHANGES - 27-jan-2000
2315 - updated the "sfnt" module interface to allow several SFNT-based
2316 drivers to co-exist peacefully
2318 - updated the "T1_Face" type to better separate Postscript font
2319 content from the rest of the FT_Face structure. Might be used
2320 later by the CFF/Type2 driver..
2322 - added an experimental replacement Type 1 driver featuring advanced
2323 (and speedy) pattern matching to retrieve the data from postscript
2326 - very minor changes in the implementation of FT_Set_Char_Size and
2327 FT_Set_Pixel_Sizes (they now implement default to ligthen the font
2331 ======================================================================
2335 This file summarizes the changes that occured since the last "beta" of
2336 FreeType 2. Because the list is important, it has been divided into
2341 I High-Level Interface (easier !)
2342 II Directory Structure
2343 III Glyph Image Formats
2349 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2351 High-Level Interface:
2353 The high-level API has been considerably simplified. Here is how:
2355 - resource objects have disappeared. this means that face objects
2356 can now be created with a single function call (see FT_New_Face
2359 - when calling either FT_New_Face & FT_Open_Face, a size object
2360 and a glyph slot object are automatically created for the face,
2361 and can be accessed through "face->glyph" and "face->size" if
2362 one really needs to. In most cases, there's no need to call
2363 FT_New_Size or FT_New_Glyph.
2365 - similarly, FT_Load_Glyph now only takes a "face" argument
2366 (instead of a glyph slot and a size). Also, it's "result"
2367 parameter is gone, as the glyph image type is returned in the
2368 field "face->glyph.format"
2370 - the list of available charmaps is directly accessible through
2371 "face->charmaps", counting "face->num_charmaps" elements. Each
2372 charmap has an 'encoding' field which specifies which known
2373 encoding it deals with. Valid values are, for example:
2375 ft_encoding_unicode (for ASCII, Latin-1 and Unicode)
2376 ft_encoding_apple_roman
2378 ft_encoding_adobe_standard
2379 ft_encoding_adobe_expert
2381 other values may be added in the future. Each charmap still
2382 holds its "platform_id" and "encoding_id" values in case the
2383 encoding is too exotic for the current library
2386 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2388 Directory Structure:
2390 Should seem obvious to most of you:
2393 config/ -- configuration sub-makefiles
2395 unix/ -- platform-specific configuration files
2400 include/ -- public header files, those to be included
2401 directly by client apps
2403 src/ -- sources of the library
2404 base/ -- the base layer
2405 sfnt/ -- the sfnt "driver" (see the drivers section
2407 truetype/ -- the truetype driver
2408 type1/ -- the type1 driver
2409 shared/ -- some header files shared between drivers
2411 demos/ -- demos/tools
2413 docs/ -- documentation (a bit empty for now)
2416 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2418 Glyph Image Formats:
2420 Drivers are now able to register new glyph image formats within the
2421 library. For now, the base layer supports of course bitmaps and
2422 vector outlines, but one could imagine something different like
2423 colored bitmaps, bi-color vectors or wathever else (Metafonts anyone
2426 See the file `include/ftimage.h'. Note also that the type
2427 FT_Raster_Map is gone, and is now replaced by FT_Bitmap, which
2428 should encompass all known bitmap types.
2430 Each new image format must provide at least one "raster", i.e. a
2431 module capable of transforming the glyph image into a bitmap. It's
2432 also possible to change the default raster used for a given glyph
2435 The default outline scan-converter now uses 128 levels of grays by
2436 default, which tends to smooth many things. Note that the demo
2437 programs have been updated significantly in order to display these..
2440 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2444 You still need GNU Make to build the library. The build system has
2445 been very seriously re-vamped in order to provide things like :
2447 - automatic host platform detection (reverting to 'config/ansi' if
2448 it is not detected, with pseudo-standard compilation flags)
2450 - the ability to compile from the Makefiles with very different and
2451 exotic compilers. Note that linking the library can be difficult
2454 For example, the file `config/win32/lcclib.bat' is invoked by the
2455 build system to create the ".lib" file with LCC-Win32 because its
2456 librarian has too many flaws to be invoked directly from the
2459 Here's how it works:
2461 - the first time you type `make', the build system runs a series of
2462 sub-makefiles in order to detect your host platform. It then
2463 dumps what it found, and creates a file called `config.mk' in the
2464 current directory. This is a sub-Makefile used to define many
2465 important Make variables used to build the library.
2467 - the second time, the build system detects the `config.mk' then use
2468 it to build the library. All object files go into 'obj' by
2469 default, as well as the library file, but this can easily be
2472 Note that you can run "make setup" to force another host platform
2473 detection even if a `config.mk' is present in the current
2474 directory. Another solution is simply to delete the file, then
2477 Finally, the default compiler for all platforms is gcc (for now,
2478 this will hopefully changed in the future). You can however specify
2479 a different compiler by specifying it after the 'setup' target as
2482 gnumake setup lcc on Win32 to use the LCC compiler
2483 gnumake setup visualc on Win32 to use Visual C++
2485 See the file `config/<system>/detect.mk' for a list of supported
2486 compilers for your platforms.
2488 It should be relatively easy to write new detection rules files and
2491 Finally, to build the demo programs, go to `demos' and launch GNU
2492 Make, it will use the `config.mk' in the top directory to build the
2496 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2500 In the previous beta, a single FT_System object was used to
2501 encompass all low-level operations like thread synchronisation,
2502 memory management and i/o access. This has been greatly simplified:
2504 - thread synchronisation has been dropped, for the simple reason
2505 that the library is already re-entrant, and that if you really
2506 need two threads accessing the same FT_Library, you should
2507 really synchronize access to it yourself with a simple mutex.
2509 - memory management is performed through a very simple object
2510 called "FT_Memory", which really is a table containing a table
2511 of pointers to functions like malloc, realloc and free as well
2512 as some user data (closure).
2514 - resources have disappeared (they created more problems than they
2515 solved), and i/o management have been simplified greatly as a
2516 result. Streams are defined through FT_Stream objects, which
2517 can be either memory-based or disk-based.
2519 Note that each face has its own stream, which is closed only
2520 when the face object is destroyed. Hence, a function like
2521 TT_Flush_Face in 1.x cannot be directly supported. However, if
2522 you really need something like this, you can easily tailor your
2523 own streams to achieve the same feature at a lower level (and
2524 use FT_Open_Face instead of FT_New_Face to create the face).
2526 See the file "include/ftsystem.h" for more details, as well as the
2527 implementations found in "config/unix" and "config/ansi".
2530 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2534 The Font Driver interface has been modified in order to support
2535 extensions & versioning.
2538 The list of the font drivers that are statically linked to the
2539 library at compile time is managed through a new configuration file
2540 called `config/<platform>/ftmodule.h'.
2542 This file is autogenerated when invoking `make modules'. This
2543 target will parse all sub-directories of 'src', looking for a
2544 "module.mk" rules file, used to describe the driver to the build
2547 Hence, one should call `make modules' each time a font driver is
2548 added or removed from the `src' directory.
2550 Finally, this version provides a "pseudo-driver" in `src/sfnt'.
2551 This driver doesn't support font files directly, but provides
2552 services used by all TrueType-like font drivers. Hence, its code is
2553 shared between the TrueType & OpenType font formats, and possibly
2554 more formats to come if we're lucky..
2557 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2561 The extensions support is inspired by the one found in 1.x.
2563 Now, each font driver has its own "extension registry", which lists
2564 which extensions are available for the font faces managed by the
2567 Extension ids are now strings, rather than 4-byte tags, as this is
2568 usually more readable.
2571 - some data, associated to each face object
2572 - an interface (table of function pointers)
2574 An extension that is format-specific should simply register itself
2575 to the correct font driver. Here is some example code:
2577 // Registering an extensions
2579 FT_Error FT_Init_XXXX_Extension( FT_Library library )
2581 FT_DriverInterface* tt_driver;
2583 driver = FT_Get_Driver( library, "truetype" );
2584 if (!driver) return FT_Err_Unimplemented_Feature;
2586 return FT_Register_Extension( driver, &extension_class );
2590 // Implementing the extensions
2592 FT_Error FT_Proceed_Extension_XXX( FT_Face face )
2594 FT_XXX_Extension ext;
2595 FT_XXX_Extension_Interface ext_interface;
2597 ext = FT_Get_Extension( face, "extensionid", &ext_interface );
2598 if (!ext) return error;
2600 return ext_interface->do_it(ext);
2603 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
2605 Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by
2606 David Turner, Robert Wilhelm, and Werner Lemberg.
2608 This file is part of the FreeType project, and may only be used,
2609 modified, and distributed under the terms of the FreeType project
2610 license, LICENSE.TXT. By continuing to use, modify, or distribute this
2611 file you indicate that you have read the license and understand and
2615 --- end of CHANGES ---
projects / reactos.git / blob