<div dir="ltr">I'm not sure I've been clear enough, because I really don't understand whether Carl wants to do LCD filtering<br>in Cairo or not. Just as a clarification, the LCD-specific APIs in FreeType have been designed in such a way<br> to enable the following:<br><br>1/ FreeType clients can use the LCD-specific APIs independent of FreeType's implementation. It's still there by default<br>    but will return 'gray' pixmaps (where R=G=B is enforced). You can change that with a single config macro change<br> <br>2/ Whenever one wants to enable LCD filtering on their system, they only need to update their build of FreeType.<br>    All other clients that use the APIs directly don't need to change their binaries. They should just work.<br> <br>So, ideally, there should be a *single* library that needs to be changed on your system to enable the feature.<br><br>If you decide to do the filtering in Cairo / LibXft / whatever, you simply make the situation more complex and byzantine<br> for everyone (distributors, packagers, end-users)<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2008/9/30 Carl Worth <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cworth@cworth.org">cworth@cworth.org</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 18:17 -0500, Brandon Wright wrote:<br> > David Turner wrote:<br> > >If you absolutely want to support LCD filtering even if FreeType doesn't,<br> > >then I really<br> > >recommend you to simply ignore the FreeType-specific APIs and just<br> > >re-implement the<br> > >damn thing in Cairo.<br> > ><br> > >then deal with the legal consequences yourselves...<br> > I agree with the point David makes here. This is subverting the most<br> > logical place to cut off the filtering for legal ramifications.<br> <br> </div>I'm sorry Brandon, but that's presuming that the original patch (for<br> cairo) had "legal ramifications" as its motivation. It did not as I<br> understood it, (I thought people just wanted the option of different<br> kinds of filtering).<br> <br> Meanwhile, I do not think that speculation on the impact of patents is<br> appropriate for the cairo mailing list. But I will say at least this<br> much:<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"><br> > "Hmm, the system FreeType says sub-pixel support isn't legal here, but<br> > we'll provide it anyway because that's how it's always been done."<br> <br> </div>No. The fact that freetype was compiled with its default options in no<br> way suggests that someone has made a ruling about the legality (or<br> illegality) of code that wasn't compiled.<br> <br> A much more likely explanation is that the distributor (Debian, say) of<br> a freetype package, (2.3.7, say), had no idea that there was new code in<br> freetype, (subpixel rendering), not compiled by default. And if<br> applications are using cairo or Xft for that functionality, how would<br> the distributor even know that there's unused and uncompiled code<br> available in the freetype source distribution.<br> <font color="#888888"><br> -Carl<br> </font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br> <br> _______________________________________________<br> cairo mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:cairo@cairographics.org">cairo@cairographics.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.cairographics.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo" target="_blank">http://lists.cairographics.org/mailman/listinfo/cairo</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>