[PD] true-type-font versus bitmap-font

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Nov 29, 2005, at 5:54 AM, carmen wrote:

>> and is it just me that thinks using only bitmap font(s) would solve  
>> our
>> problems ?
>
> it would just change the problems. then again im not sure what the  
> 'problem' referenced by this thread is...

Here are the two key problems:

1) the font is rendered differently on each platform.  So when the font  
is a good size on Mac OS X, then it is too small on Windows.

2) changing the font size doesn't change the spacing between objects,  
so they overlap when the font size is increased.

> is it the fonts are ugly? that can be fixed by changing the default  
> font...
>
> is it that the fonts often overrrun the box edges? or boxes overrun  
> other boxes? easy to fix by letting tk choose the bounding box instead  
> of pd pretending it can guess it

This sounds like the solution we are after.  What would that entail?   
What are the downsides?

It might be a problem for things like netpd, serendipd, and any patch  
that dynamically deletes objects since those rely on pixel coords.  But  
there is probably a way to apply the tk scaling to that as well, via  
[tot] or something.

> is it that the fonts are too big/small/whatever? let the user select  
> the font..
>
>> like, a 10pixels height bitmap font would(should) be 10pixels height  
>> on
>> any os or screen resolution (were not supposed to scale bitmap fonts)
>
> i have 2 screens, one is 1024x768 in 17", one is 1280x800 in 12". a  
> bitmap font is vastly different heights on the two screens..way less  
> predictable size-wise than scalable font sizes..except that theyre  
> getting smaller every year :D
>
>> 3. somehow embedd bitmap fonts in tk/pd
>
> you should be able to do this, you can embed images into tk code  
> anyways. but see above, re bitmaps (ie, i'm not volunteering to  
> implement it, but i will merge my 'boxes that never overlap and are  
> resizable' code to desiredata when i can)

Regardless of what kind of font it is, it would be nice to have a  
Pd-specific font.  I think the Tk font handling can do anything we want  
it to.

.hc

>
>> the "best" would be number 3. but i havent found anything about
>> "embedding" fonts in tk apps (well, i assume we would need another  
>> font
>> renderer than the system uses = way more work ?)
>>
>> so, my vote would go to 2.
>>
>> cheers
>> andre
>
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