[cairo] Text rendering crash

[Ian Britten]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Your guess is exactly what's happening.  The docs have been enhanced to point
> this out with an example.  See:
> 
> http://cairographics.org/manual/cairo-ft-font.html#cairo-ft-font-face-create-for-ft-face
> 
> Now I don't know how the FreeType cache manager supports that.  Perhaps David
> can answer.

I wouldn't want to speak as a FT maintainer, but my basic understanding
is that "No, it doesn't".  I think the cache just frees up whatever it
wants, whenever it needs to.

Given that assumption, I'm finding myself in a bind, unsure how to
proceed.  I did some thinking over the weekend, but most of my thoughts
required intrusive changes to Cairo, which I suspect you're probably
not interested in...
eg:
- Change Cairo to work with FT_Glyphs rather than FT_Faces, as there
   seems to be a FT_Glyph_Copy() which presumably could be used keep
   copies of the glyphs (even if the FT_Face is deleted).
- Ask FT for a new FT_Face_Copy(), but again, Cairo would have to be
   enhanced to use it.
- Add some sort of hook (callback) to Cairo for when it needs the
   FT_Face again.  The default implementation would do whatever it
   currently does, but I could provide my own callback which would
   re-fetch the FT_Face from the FT cache.  Again though, this would
   be changes to Cairo.
- etc

In other words, there's various approaches that could be discussed, if
minor/extensive changes are made.  However, I'm not seeing much of a
solution given the currently-available APIs (from both Cairo and FT).
Does anyone out there use the Cairo/FreeType font stuff much/any?  If
yes, do you use it with the FT Cache?

As always, any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated!
Ian