Hi Bernhard,<br><br>>They do not? I don't know. I would hope they would provide it.<br>>As for typesetting texts, the libraries should be suitable I guess,<br>>but for converting fonts into curves to do special effects
<br>>low level access is needed, I agree.<br><br>GIMP and Inkscape use Xft engine to draw text strings therefore <br>text objects have not outline property, distance between characters and<br>space width can not be under control, all letters should be disposed on
<br>common base line. Such text rendering is satisfactory for UI, but very <br>primitive for good vector graphics editor. XaraLX for example has more<br>advanced text engine.<br><br>All these tasks can be solved by introducing "glyph" object
i.e. text object<br>will be dynamic group of glyphs. Each glyph should has own font property,<br>transformation history etc.<br><br>>It would provide the low level bindings, I guess.<br>>The big problems for most users of Skencil
0.6 with Tcl/tk is<br>>that handling fonts was so difficult.<br>>Many users just would want to install a few additional fonts.<br><br>To resolve "text problem" we can divide this issue on subissues:<br><br>
1. Collect font files paths in common dictionary with corresponded font names.<br>2. Exctract on runtime character glyphs with all according font metrics.<br><br>Second task can be doing by FreeType2 if we provide absolute path to font file.
<br><br>For first task we can use as direct search (but in this case we will find many fonts,<br>which are not installed in the system, for example, Java installation contains own<br>fonts) or fontconfig. Direct search also can be used to provide access for fonts
<br>which are not installed in the system and rarely needed in design.<br><br>>Bernhard (H.) will be back this monday...<br><br>It would be interesting to discuss all these problems with Sketch/Skencil author :)<br><br>
>Can you tell us on what you needed to change to build Skencil on Mandriva<br>>2007? (Best on skencil-devel.)<br><br>hmm... complex question. As you understand, the main problem is compilation of <br>Skencil native modules. The following files are absent in MDK2007 distribution,
<br>as in regular rpm, and in devel rpm:<br><br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/gtk+-2.0.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/gdk-x11-2.0.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/gdk-pixbuf-2.0.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/gdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/pango.pc
<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/pangoft2.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/pangox.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/pangoxft.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/atk.pc<br>/usr/lib/pkgconfig/pygtk-2.0.pc<br><br>May be this list is not complete. I just copied these files from my Wing IDE installation
<br>(it contains own gtk+ engine and package configs) and manualy edit paths in all these files.<br>But it seems the best way is a build without pkgconfig support, at least for MDK2007.<br><br>>I completly agree and installation is important. I have not tried
<br>>Inkscape's autopackages. Do they allow installation of development snapshots?<br>>I mean: What would be the difference of having spec files for Mandriva RPMs?<br><br>Inkscape's autopackages allow install latest development builds, but only on new distros.
<br>For example it useful for MDK2007, but doesn't install Inkscape on MDK2005. Therefore <br>this way is not a silver bullet also.<br><br>Sincerely,<br><br>Igor Novikov<br>sK1 Team<br><a href="http://sk1.sf.net">http://sk1.sf.net
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