Re: [Plplot-devel] Windows (win3 driver) and freetype fonts

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2005-12-30 08:28+0100 Arjen Markus wrote:

> Alan,
>
> I certainly forgot that smooth=0 one. I am not sure about the available
> fonts - it is the mirkiest part of the whole thing, actually.
>
> Note: I copied the font translation table from the wingcc configuration
> and it seemed to work alright, but I have no idea if it really is
> appropriate.
> Well, my system is not customised for exotic fonts or anything, so I
> expect
> most Windows machines to have the same set.
>
> At least it is worth to try it with that extra flag.
>

To Arjen and Andrew (Roach):

I think getting x24c to work on windows-based platforms is tremendously
important since potentially there are a lot of users using those platforms
who would like to make figure captions in their native (non-Western
European) language.  So I have made some further comments here to help you
two with that goal.

Arjen, if your device win3 is working correctly, then "./x24c -dev win3
-drvopt smooth=0" should generate the "Western European language" half of
the flag exactly like http://plplot.sourceforge.net/examples/demo24.php)
while the other half should be incorrect characters or blanks if you are
just using default fonts. Is that the result you get now?

Once you get that result, then the remaining font part should be
straightforward but tedious. For each remaining non-Western European
language on the flag you must find and install a good windows font for that
language and inform PLplot at run-time where that special font is located on
your system.  However, before tackling that task for the bare windows
platform I suggest you and Andrew do the same thing on Cygwin and MinGW
first for the wingcc device since the run-time infrastructure is already
(mostly) in place to support that.

On Unix based systems environment variables are used to specify the location
of special fonts at run time.  Andrew, will you comment on that issue for
the Cygwin, MinGW, DJGPP and bare windows platforms?  I do know the first
two have general support for environment variables, but I believe DJGPP and
bare windows does not have that exact capability.  Perhaps there is some
other standard way on those platforms for the command-line user to
communicate with executables?  Note, plfreetype.c file has some conditional
compile sections depending on WIN32 and MSDOS which might need to be changed
so that environment variables can be used for at least Cygwin and MinGW to
specify font information at run time.

Once the two of you have found a good "exotic" windows font set to run x24c
on the Cygwin and MinGW platforms using environment variables to specify the
fonts, then you should be able to do something similar for the bare windows
and DJGPP platforms for plfreetype-aware device drivers (such as win3 for
bare windows) that are specific to those platforms.  I am assuming here that
some rough equivalent to environment variables exists for bare windows and
DJGPP to allow command-line users to communicate with executables at
run-time.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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