Re: [Xtrkcad-fork-developers] Porting options for XTrackCAD

[David F. <fe...@ia...>]

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:54:34 +0100 
"Martin Fischer" wrote -
> Hi there,
> 
> this group has been awfully quiet for months now. So I decided to report 
> on my recent efforts regarding XTrackCAD.

Months!? Years!
Snip
> 
> Printing would be a major job in a porting effort. Today XTrackCAD 
> creates Postscipt directly. This approach is of for Unix but not for 
> Windows. So it would be necessary to convert printing to a Cairo based 
> implementation.

Printing on Linux sucks.

I submitted a patch to Dan Markle last April  which corrected the most 
egregious errors in the postscript output so that it will print through CUPS,
but he either didn't like it or forgot about it.

There are serious screen-Postscript font mapping issues on Gentoo Linux
which need addressing. Maybe switching entirely to Cairo is the way to go.
 
> 
> The changes done are so far only available on my system. There is a 
> significant risk that the changes break building on Linux and  Windows 
> with MSVC. So testing will be necessary in case the changes will be 
> committed.
> 
> Anybody interested in further work? I have some ideas that I will 
> outline in a further email.

Yes I am interested in helping. At the very least I will compile and test on 
my 64 bit Gentoo Linux system. Also on a 32 bit one if needed.  I will submit
such patches as I can.

We badly need some development activity if only to keep bitrot in check. 
I am glad to see you back.  


Dave F