Re: [matplotlib-devel] Subsetting fonts in Postscript

[Michael D. <md...@st...>]

John Hunter wrote:
> On 7/5/07, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:
>
>> It may be worthwhile to look at Cairo's font subsetting code if it's
>> determined that the Python Postscript backend has other advantages.  I'm
>> sure people who've been here longer than I have can better speak to
>> those pros and cons.
>
> Unfortunately, because it is LGPL, I don't think we can in good
> conscience look at the code, because doing so probably violates the
> spirit of the LGPL which says you can link with it but not reuse the
> code in a non GPL/LGPL program.  Others may have a different
> interpretation, and if look but don't copy is OK under the LGPL as it
> is journalism (read and summarize with citation but don't plagiarize)
> then its fine by me but that's not my current understanding.
Agreed.  I haven't looked at it the Cairo source yet, so you can still 
consider me "untainted" in that regard.  My earlier comment was mainly 
out of licensing confusion. ;)

Do you agree that it is still an open question whether it's better to 
spend time improving the matplotib PS backend, or to fix (if possible) 
the issues with matplotlib's Cairo integration?  It does ultimately come 
down to a tradeoff: an additional dependency vs. extra maintenance 
burden.  Maybe it would be a good start to enumerate the Cairo backend's 
current shortcomings.  (So far I've seen some minor text bugs, and math 
rendering is raster dumps.)

Cheers,
Mike