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[ANN] FreeType Plus release

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Andrew Tween

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Hi Brad,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Fuller" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:46 PM
Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

> Andrew Tween wrote:
> >>> All the menus really need re-working to provide nice scrolling lists.
> >>>
> >> Hmm, I'd say "to not need to scroll nor page in the first place" :)
> >>
> > :)
> > Do you have any ideas on how that could be done?
> > If, for instance, you had 999 fonts?
> >
> > A fisheye, everything tiny, until you hover over it view?
> > Or typing the font name to bring up matches?
> >
> > I'm curious
> >
> Could use cascading menus. based on mfr, or type/kind, or even alphabetical

Those are all good ideas.

But, wouldn't scrolling still be needed, at some point?
If you had 999 fonts beginning with 'A'.
Or, 999 Sans Serif fonts.
Or maybe, not that many fonts, but a small screen resolution (640x480).

Cheers,
Andy

Brad Fuller-3

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Andrew Tween wrote:

> Hi Brad,
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brad Fuller" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
> <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:46 PM
> Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release
>
>
>
>> Andrew Tween wrote:
>>
>>>>> All the menus really need re-working to provide nice scrolling lists.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Hmm, I'd say "to not need to scroll nor page in the first place" :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> :)
>>> Do you have any ideas on how that could be done?
>>> If, for instance, you had 999 fonts?
>>>
>>> A fisheye, everything tiny, until you hover over it view?
>>> Or typing the font name to bring up matches?
>>>
>>> I'm curious
>>>
>>>
>> Could use cascading menus. based on mfr, or type/kind, or even alphabetical
>>
>
> Those are all good ideas.
>
> But, wouldn't scrolling still be needed, at some point?
> If you had 999 fonts beginning with 'A'.
> Or, 999 Sans Serif fonts.
>

Chances are that's not going to be. But, i see your point.
> Or maybe, not that many fonts, but a small screen resolution (640x480).
>

Yeah, if there are 999 fonts, then no matter what you do, there is
either going to be some screen real estate used up or that energy is
going to be placed into the user finagling around to browse and select.
A neat problem which I don't know how to solve.

Some alternative ideas:
* Category Based:
- Cascading Lists: (http://designinginterfaces.com/Cascading_Lists)
- Closable Panels (http://designinginterfaces.com/Closable_Panels)
(which is similar to the tree-table)

* Helpful navigation builtin to the selection:
- Jump (http://designinginterfaces.com/Jump_to_Item)

*Alternative Selection:
- Create a "My Fonts" selection that contains either the fonts the user
has selected recently, or ones that he selected manually to be in the My
Fonts set.

* Show All - I've seen menus where ALL the font names are shown. Takes
up the whole freakin' screen. Scary, but you see them all.

Brad Fuller-3

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Brad Fuller wrote:

> Andrew Tween wrote:
>
>> Hi Brad,
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Brad Fuller" <[hidden email]>
>> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
>> <[hidden email]>
>> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:46 PM
>> Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Andrew Tween wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> All the menus really need re-working to provide nice scrolling lists.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, I'd say "to not need to scroll nor page in the first place" :)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> :)
>>>> Do you have any ideas on how that could be done?
>>>> If, for instance, you had 999 fonts?
>>>>
>>>> A fisheye, everything tiny, until you hover over it view?
>>>> Or typing the font name to bring up matches?
>>>>
>>>> I'm curious
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Could use cascading menus. based on mfr, or type/kind, or even alphabetical
>>>
>>>
>> Those are all good ideas.
>>
>> But, wouldn't scrolling still be needed, at some point?
>> If you had 999 fonts beginning with 'A'.
>> Or, 999 Sans Serif fonts.
>>
>>
>
> Chances are that's not going to be. But, i see your point.
>
>> Or maybe, not that many fonts, but a small screen resolution (640x480).
>>
>>
>
> Yeah, if there are 999 fonts, then no matter what you do, there is
> either going to be some screen real estate used up or that energy is
> going to be placed into the user finagling around to browse and select.
> A neat problem which I don't know how to solve.
>
> Some alternative ideas:
> * Category Based:
> - Cascading Lists: (http://designinginterfaces.com/Cascading_Lists)
> - Closable Panels (http://designinginterfaces.com/Closable_Panels)
> (which is similar to the tree-table)
>
> * Helpful navigation builtin to the selection:
> - Jump (http://designinginterfaces.com/Jump_to_Item)
>
> *Alternative Selection:
> - Create a "My Fonts" selection that contains either the fonts the user
> has selected recently, or ones that he selected manually to be in the My
> Fonts set.
>
> * Show All - I've seen menus where ALL the font names are shown. Takes
> up the whole freakin' screen. Scary, but you see them all.
>

Oh.. forgot to add the obvious: change page dn/up to arrows above and
below the menu. Hover over either and it automatically scrolls in that
direction. That would at least make it easier for people to browse. The
problem, I think, is it takes a while to render the next "set" of font
names. Right? Seems so on my system (which is slow with a lot of fonts.)
So, you could have the rendered list before the request.

Andrew Tween

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Hi Brad,
> Oh.. forgot to add the obvious: change page dn/up to arrows above and
> below the menu. Hover over either and it automatically scrolls in that
> direction. That would at least make it easier for people to browse.

good idea.

> The
> problem, I think, is it takes a while to render the next "set" of font
> names. Right? Seems so on my system (which is slow with a lot of fonts.)
> So, you could have the rendered list before the request.

Yes. It is slow.
Sophie caches a bitmap of each font and renders that instead of loading the
font through Freetype.and rendering the text.
Something similar is needed to speed things up.

Cheers,
Andy

Andrew Tween

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

In reply to this post by Brad Fuller-3

Hi Brad,

> Some alternative ideas:
> * Category Based:
> - Cascading Lists: (http://designinginterfaces.com/Cascading_Lists)
> - Closable Panels (http://designinginterfaces.com/Closable_Panels)
> (which is similar to the tree-table)
>
> * Helpful navigation builtin to the selection:
> - Jump (http://designinginterfaces.com/Jump_to_Item)
>
> *Alternative Selection:
> - Create a "My Fonts" selection that contains either the fonts the user
> has selected recently, or ones that he selected manually to be in the My
> Fonts set.
>
> * Show All - I've seen menus where ALL the font names are shown. Takes
> up the whole freakin' screen. Scary, but you see them all.

These are all great ideas.
I look forward to seeing your implementations of them in Squeak ;)

(I'll do something with the font menus myself. Eventually. But if anyone doesn't
want to wait for 6-12 months to see some results, then dive in and have a go at
writing the interface that you would like to see).

Cheers,
Andy

Chris Muller-3

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

In reply to this post by Andrew Tween

Sheesh.. Total, utter, maximum Gorgeousity. Thank you Andy, thank
you. This really lurches the look of my image forward a big step.

I spent the whole day looking at my fonts. I never thought it would
happen, but I found something I like (a lot) better than Verdana for
the code font. It's called "Tw Cen MT (OpenType)" which I guess is
"Twentieth Century".

The Century fonts for other stuff are really gorgeous too.

I got a new computer a couple of months of go with a high-res screen,
so I'm enjoying "big" (>= 14-point) fonts with "no hinting". It's
high contrast and no jaggies at all.

Thanks again!
Chris

On 4/28/07, Andrew Tween <[hidden email]> wrote:

> This is an official announcement that the FreeType Plus packages are now
> released.
>
> You can download from SqueakMap, or via the Package Universe within a developer
> Squeak (squeak-dev) image.
>
> I will be documenting various aspects of this on the wiki; at present you can
> view some screenshots, and read some preliminary descriptions, at
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5984
>
> It will work, to varying degrees, on Windows (98, 2000, XP, & Vista); Linux
> (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.); and Mac OS X.
>
> It requires an FT2Plugin, which is shipped with the Mac VM, and is available for
> Windows/Linux via the FreeType Plus (plugins installer) package.
>
> To enable sub-pixel anti-aliasing, the optional, and separate, FreeType Plus
> (sub-pixel anti-aliasing) package must be installed.
> This requires a modified BitBltPlugin. This is currently available for
> Windows/Linux only, and is installed via the FreeType Plus (plugins installer)
> package. If anybody wishes to attempt compile it for Macs, then please let me
> know.
>
> Rather than try to describe everything, and anticipate every question in
> advance, I would rather wait to see how people get on with installing/using it,
> and then update and improve the documentation accordingly. So, if you have
> problems, then please let me know; and if you have success then that would be
> nice to hear about too :)
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
>
>
>

David Mitchell-10

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

In reply to this post by Brad Fuller-3

I'm very much enjoying FreeType release! My Squeak has never looked better.

How do I ask it to refresh the font list. I had a number of installed
fonts in Windows and it was slow to render the menus. Since I don't
really use hardly any of the fonts I had installed, I removed them from
Windows. I thought restarting Squeak would do it since FreeType scans
the fonts on image startup. It didn't work, so I reinstalled from a base
image. I presume there is a way to force the rebuild of the installed
font list?

>>Rather than try to describe everything, and anticipate every question in
>>advance, I would rather wait to see how people get on with installing/using it,
>>and then update and improve the documentation accordingly. So, if you have
>>problems, then please let me know; and if you have success then that would be
>>nice to hear about too
>>
>>

Andrew Tween

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Hi David,
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Mitchell" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 4:42 AM
Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

> I'm very much enjoying FreeType release! My Squeak has never looked better.
>
> How do I ask it to refresh the font list. I had a number of installed
> fonts in Windows and it was slow to render the menus. Since I don't
> really use hardly any of the fonts I had installed, I removed them from
> Windows. I thought restarting Squeak would do it since FreeType scans
> the fonts on image startup. It didn't work, so I reinstalled from a base
> image. I presume there is a way to force the rebuild of the installed
> font list?

They should be removed on image startup, but there is a bug that prevents this.
I've fixed it in the latest version on squeaksource.

To manually refresh you can evaluate...
FreeTypeFontProvider current updateFromSystem

Thanks for reporting this problem.
Cheers,
Andy

>
> >>Rather than try to describe everything, and anticipate every question in
> >>advance, I would rather wait to see how people get on with installing/using
it,
> >>and then update and improve the documentation accordingly. So, if you have
> >>problems, then please let me know; and if you have success then that would
be
> >>nice to hear about too
> >>
> >>
>
>

Gary Chambers-4

RE: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

In reply to this post by Andrew Tween

Great work Andy, was going to have to go through the pain of integrating
host OS fonts myself!

Like Damien Pollet, however, I too have noticed a discrpenacy in point
sizes.

>>Finally the point sizes are not consistent with the ones in Cocoa apps. An
8pt font in Squeak looks like its 10pt version in Cocoa.

For instance, a 36pt 'BitStream Vera Sans' looks more like a 32pt
BitStreamVeraSans (original Squeak font).
Not sure if this is the old fonts being incorrectly sized though!

Keep up the good work, you're making many people very happy!

Andrew Tween

Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Hi Gary,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Chambers" <[hidden email]>
To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 8:22 PM
Subject: RE: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

>Great work Andy, was going to have to go through the pain of integrating
>host OS fonts myself!

>Like Damien Pollet, however, I too have noticed a discrpenacy in point
>sizes.

>>Finally the point sizes are not consistent with the ones in Cocoa apps. An
8pt font in Squeak looks like its 10pt version in Cocoa.

>For instance, a 36pt 'BitStream Vera Sans' looks more like a 32pt
>BitStreamVeraSans (original Squeak font).
>Not sure if this is the old fonts being incorrectly sized though!

I think that the scaling for TTCFont glyphs is incorrectly calculated.
(the unitsPerEm is ignored; instead, the ascender and descender are used to
calculate the scaling factor).

I've attached a modified method which brings the size of TTCFont glyphs into
line with the FreeType glyphs. I haven't given it much testing though.

>Keep up the good work, you're making many people very happy!

Cheers,
Andy

TTCFont-computeForm.st (725 bytes) Download Attachment

Gary Chambers-4

RE: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Ar, that seems to do the trick to make things match (matches Notepad under
Windows too).

Though, probably, the glyph methods should have different names now, or take
the unitsPerEm as an
extra paramter!

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Andrew
Tween
Sent: 07 May 2007 11:48 am
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

Hi Gary,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Chambers" <[hidden email]>
To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 8:22 PM
Subject: RE: [ANN] FreeType Plus release

>Great work Andy, was going to have to go through the pain of
>integrating host OS fonts myself!

>Like Damien Pollet, however, I too have noticed a discrpenacy in point
>sizes.

>>Finally the point sizes are not consistent with the ones in Cocoa
>>apps. An
8pt font in Squeak looks like its 10pt version in Cocoa.

>For instance, a 36pt 'BitStream Vera Sans' looks more like a 32pt
>BitStreamVeraSans (original Squeak font). Not sure if this is the old
>fonts being incorrectly sized though!

I think that the scaling for TTCFont glyphs is incorrectly calculated. (the
unitsPerEm is ignored; instead, the ascender and descender are used to
calculate the scaling factor).

I've attached a modified method which brings the size of TTCFont glyphs into
line with the FreeType glyphs. I haven't given it much testing though.

>Keep up the good work, you're making many people very happy!

Cheers,
Andy

123