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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: koffice developers' meeting questions
From:       Dirk_Schönberger <dirk.schoenberger () sz-online ! de>
Date:       2003-09-01 22:24:12
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> > 3. Will the Qt4 text engine use the new canvas library (and what it
exactly is)?
> Both don't exist yet. But I don't think it will work that way. If we can
> get text painting to be 'perfect' in Qt, I see no reason for (at least
KWord
> and KPresenter) to use their own canvas/painter/...

Is Qt4 text engine layout related or text editing related?
Text editing - I think it would be useful to put a text editor component as
part of the canvas library
Layout related - I think the rendering API (QPainter) should be extended so
that a complex text API can be implemented differently by multiple backends
(X / QWidget using freetype, PS output, PDF output...)
I think the current public text API in QPainter is not quite appropriate for
typographical text.
You end up rendering text to high in the rendering queue, which e.g. leads
to non-indexable Postscript output.

> > 4. Will it (be possible to add) support (for) kerning?
> Lars says this is possible. Remains to be done, of course, but since
freetype
> provides the info it should be no big problem.

I think if you add kerning support at QPainter level you end with e.g.
Postscript output, where the text doesn't resemble the intended text, but
instead some fragments of characters or glyphs. You cannot index the result
Postscript anymore, because the text strings doesn't appear anly longer in
the Postscript output.

> > 5. Will it (be possible to add) support (for) diffrent than QPainter
painting
> > class (to support transparency or indexable postscript output)?
> I don't see why QPainter shouldn't be able to do those things?

The current QPainter API doesn't allow for things like Postscript/SVG style
vector paths, transparency / antialiased rendering, indexable Postscript
(see above).
To add these features, it would be needed to add matching APIs. This isn't
planned AFAIK, at least not for the next major release.
For some ideas for such an API in QT style, please checkout my KPainter
proposal (in KDE CVS, kdenonbeta/kpainter)

Regards
Dirk






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