4 ms·

It doesn't support Unicode, doesn't support font antialiasing, and instead of fontconfig, you need to grapple with X11 core font support, using ttmkfdir and fri

It doesn't support Unicode, doesn't support font antialiasing, and instead of fontconfig, you need to grapple with X11 core font support, using ttmkfdir and friends, and make the X11 server aware of where the fonts are. It's some experience I definitely don't miss from those days.

joz1-k 1y ago
Oh, yes, I remember those early times as well. :) The question is whether it's possible to maintain the legacy API and upgrade the internal architecture to use more modern approaches. I think it's almost always possible, but perhaps the cost to develop and maintain such a legacy layer is too high for an open-source desktop environment and toolkit. The Windows OS managed to support old APIs quite well, but the available resources are incomparable.
anthk 1y ago
Motif was improved with XFT/Fontconfig support. GTK1 can be patched too'
floam 1y ago
Are you sure no antialiasing? No subpixel for sure. I think I have some rusty memory of LD_PRELOAD my own .so with AA enabled (special patch? I don’t recall) with a game’s installer I shipped to get the statically linked GTK+1.2 Loki Games setup utility looking modern. That plus a QUITE SPIFFY looking splash bitmap slapped onto it would hopefully let the installation complete before anyone realized it was a creaky old thing.
- floam 1y ago
  Oh yes. I present you gtkaa: https://web.archive.org/web/20231129124306/http://alx14.free.fr/gtkaa/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231129124306/http://alx14.free...
  - WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
    …and recompile mozilla and nautilus and maybe all other stuff using gtk1… As someone who used to build Mozilla suite back when their gtk2 support was experimental, I’d say this is too much faff.
- Findecanor 1y ago
  GTK 1.x used GDK which was a thin veneer on top of Xlib, and I think it defaulted to use Xlib calls for text rendering. If the X server supported antialiased text (and subpixel rendering) then GTK should have done too.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    Do any X servers do? Antialiased text on X is generally done by rendering the glyphs client side.
    - anthk 1y ago
      They did with the XFT font server? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Font_Server https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Font_Server
      - vidarh 1y ago
        Did it? I can't find documentation that suggest it returned antialiased font data. The server could of course request a larger font size and scale it down, but did any do that? I'm not questioning that it'd be possible to render antialiased fonts server side as there's nothing in X that really prevent it, I just don't recall that being a thing, rather than upgrading apps to use Xrender to render fonts client side and send the servers and atlas of pre-rendered glyphs the way we currently do. I could very well be wrong - I didn't do much X programming in the brief period it'd have been relevant.
        anthk 1y ago
        Back in the day there was a font server for antialiased fonts, xfstt: https://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue28/ayers1.html https://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue28/ayers1.html That was what I was looking for.
        vidarh 1y ago
        Thanks for the pointer, but from the page you linked to: > Even though xfstt doesn't do any anti-aliasing of the fonts (since there's no support for this in X) The page it links to for xfsft as well, says this: > Although FreeType does support font smoothing, the modified libfont.a does not. Adding font smoothing to X would require a major change to the system: in X, glyphs are (monochrome) bitmaps, and there is no support for using pixmaps as glyphs. Changing this would require the design and implementation of an extension to both the X protocol and the font server protocol, and changing applications to use the extensions. It goes on to link to the Xrender extension as a solution.
tiahura 1y ago
I wonder how many llm tokens are burned dealing with Unicode issues?

joz1-k 1y ago

Oh, yes, I remember those early times as well. :) The question is whether it's possible to maintain the legacy API and upgrade the internal architecture to use more modern approaches. I think it's almost always possible, but perhaps the cost to develop and maintain such a legacy layer is too high for an open-source desktop environment and toolkit. The Windows OS managed to support old APIs quite well, but the available resources are incomparable.

anthk 1y ago

Motif was improved with XFT/Fontconfig support. GTK1 can be patched too'

floam 1y ago

Are you sure no antialiasing? No subpixel for sure. I think I have some rusty memory of LD_PRELOAD my own .so with AA enabled (special patch? I don’t recall) with a game’s installer I shipped to get the statically linked GTK+1.2 Loki Games setup utility looking modern. That plus a QUITE SPIFFY looking splash bitmap slapped onto it would hopefully let the installation complete before anyone realized it was a creaky old thing.

floam 1y ago
Oh yes. I present you gtkaa: https://web.archive.org/web/20231129124306/http://alx14.free.fr/gtkaa/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231129124306/http://alx14.free...
- WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
  …and recompile mozilla and nautilus and maybe all other stuff using gtk1… As someone who used to build Mozilla suite back when their gtk2 support was experimental, I’d say this is too much faff.
Findecanor 1y ago
GTK 1.x used GDK which was a thin veneer on top of Xlib, and I think it defaulted to use Xlib calls for text rendering. If the X server supported antialiased text (and subpixel rendering) then GTK should have done too.
- vidarh 1y ago
  Do any X servers do? Antialiased text on X is generally done by rendering the glyphs client side.
  - anthk 1y ago
    They did with the XFT font server? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Font_Server https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Font_Server
    - vidarh 1y ago
      Did it? I can't find documentation that suggest it returned antialiased font data. The server could of course request a larger font size and scale it down, but did any do that? I'm not questioning that it'd be possible to render antialiased fonts server side as there's nothing in X that really prevent it, I just don't recall that being a thing, rather than upgrading apps to use Xrender to render fonts client side and send the servers and atlas of pre-rendered glyphs the way we currently do. I could very well be wrong - I didn't do much X programming in the brief period it'd have been relevant.
      - anthk 1y ago
        Back in the day there was a font server for antialiased fonts, xfstt: https://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue28/ayers1.html https://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue28/ayers1.html That was what I was looking for.
        vidarh 1y ago
        Thanks for the pointer, but from the page you linked to: > Even though xfstt doesn't do any anti-aliasing of the fonts (since there's no support for this in X) The page it links to for xfsft as well, says this: > Although FreeType does support font smoothing, the modified libfont.a does not. Adding font smoothing to X would require a major change to the system: in X, glyphs are (monochrome) bitmaps, and there is no support for using pixmaps as glyphs. Changing this would require the design and implementation of an extension to both the X protocol and the font server protocol, and changing applications to use the extensions. It goes on to link to the Xrender extension as a solution.

tiahura 1y ago

I wonder how many llm tokens are burned dealing with Unicode issues?