#5 Font modules

[Tarn Weisner Burton]

Create font modules. Targets: bitmap + outline. It
would be nice if out lines could be sent to GLE

methods:

1) wrap GLTT (see http://gltt.sf.net\) -> under GPL!
Also doesn't interface with GLE
2) Use PyFT to create own variant of GLTT. Problem
with this is that PyFT is under GPL, even though
Freetype can be used with either BSD/GPL. Also PyFT
is Freetype1 not Freetype2.
3) Wrap Freetype2 and write own python code.
4) write own C version of GLTT that uses Freetype.
5) Use python FontTools? (No rasterizer)
6) expose platform specific bitmap font capabilities
through WGL, AGL, GLX, etc. or come up with common
call.

[Mike C. Fletcher]

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Another possible option:
http://oglft.sourceforge.net/ -- LGPL, (apparently) same
basic functionality as GLTT, based on FreeType2. Claims to
be 0.0 status, but has what looks to be fairly close to a
completed OGLFT.CPP (haven't tested it's functionality, just
browsed the code). Note that it's C++, not C, code. By the
look of it, could be its own module, rather than being part
of the base PyOpenGL module (especially given the license),
as it's interactions are all self-contained (you pass in
strings, booleans, etceteras, there's no arrays/callbacks).
Has all the bells+whistles you'd want (multiple 2D and 3D
formats, extrusions with GLE, use of truetype, etceteras).

[Mike C. Fletcher]

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user_id=34901

Another possible option:
http://oglft.sourceforge.net/ -- LGPL, (apparently) same
basic functionality as GLTT, based on FreeType2. Claims to
be 0.0 status, but has what looks to be fairly close to a
completed OGLFT.CPP (haven't tested it's functionality, just
browsed the code). Note that it's C++, not C, code. By the
look of it, could be its own module, rather than being part
of the base PyOpenGL module (especially given the license),
as it's interactions are all self-contained (you pass in
strings, booleans, etceteras, there's no arrays/callbacks).
Has all the bells+whistles you'd want (multiple 2D and 3D
formats, extrusions with GLE, use of truetype, etceteras).

[Mike C. Fletcher]

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user_id=34901

Python fonttools project does a nice job of giving you the
shells for the code, I'm playing around with making a
run-time renderer with it. As noted, no rasteriser,
however, so have to roll both geometry and raster-mode
implementations.

[Mike C. Fletcher]

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Okay, now have the following in a fairly decent framework in
OpenGLContext.scenegraph.text:

fonttools -- provides outline or polygonal fonts, including
capping and extrusion. Cross-platform, requires only
fonttools, GL, GLU and GLE. Uses TTF files directly.
(Note: there are trivial dependencies on OpenGLContext,
nothing that couldn't be stripped out in a few hours if
someone wanted to use the lib outside of OpenGLContext).
Can extract font-names from those font-files of which it's
made aware.

pygame -- provides antialiased rendering of fonts into
images, cross-platform, requires pygame and the attendant
libraries, including SDL_ttf. Uses TTF files directly. Has
no way to find out font-face or font-family names.

wxPython -- provides non-antialiased rendering of fonts into
images, cross-platform (but not cross-context), requires
wxPython. Has access to registered system fonts and can use
font-names instead of filenames to reference fonts, can't
load TTF files directly.

GLUT -- fallback provider, in case none of the others is
available, provides non-antialiased glBitmap display of
ASCII 7-bit characters in a small range of fonts and sizes.

WGL -- provides polygonal fonts on Win32 (bitmap fonts are
missing metrics)

The image-based types are all currently doing glDrawPixels
rendering, will likely be adding a texture-based version
eventually as well.

I'm marking the general request "closed", feel free to open
more specific requests anybody.