gd and fontconfig

[Tatsuro M. <tma...@ya...>]

Hello

Recently, in the one of the gnuplot in Japan, the font setting around fontconfig
has been extensively discussed.

Two topics are mainly has been discussed. One is the font setting on the gd 
related terminals linked with the fontconfig. The other is how to add new fonts
in the terminals where the fontconfig treats font mapping on windows.

Here I introduce the first one.

In the current cygwin, the gd library provide by the cygwin team is linked with the 
fontconfig library.  And the windows binaries of gcc-4.4.0 are also prepared 
with the gd library with the fontconfig without deep consideration.

In the discussions in the threads it was noticed that the gd linked with the fontconfig 
affects the font setting of gd related terminals
(png, jpeg, and gif). 

In this case the font setting is almost the same as the pango related terminals (wxt,
pdfcairo, pngcairo).

The font setting like 
set term png font "/usr/local/fonts/ttf/arial.ttf"
is not allowed and one must use

set term png font 'arial'

and fonts used in these terminals have to be set through the forntconfig 
configuration files. In addition GDFONTPATH is not effective.

The situation is obviously contradicted to the current manual concerning to the gd 
related terminals.

However, from the view point unification of font setting among the terminals, 
the situation is not always bad.

The below also is to be considered.
In the unixy distributions, the dependencies are usually provided from the 
distributions.  In the case, users use the gd library linked with the 
fontconfig happens to be used without deep consideration like me.  
(In this case, the cygwin is categorized as unixy.)


I would like to hear the opinions from the developers and experts of 
the gnuplot on this matter.

Should next binary distribution be prepared with the gd not linked with 
the fontconfig library ?

Regards

Tatsuro

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VANCOUVER 2010 PARALYMPIC GAMES News
http://pr.mail.yahoo.co.jp/para/