Re: Rendering of text

[Guy Barrand <barrand@lal.in2p3.fr>]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Jonathan Lim wrote:

> On Thu Aug 24 10:38:39 2000, prikryl@vrvis.at wrote:
> > 
> > Hi there,
> > 
> > I was wondering how the text support shall be included in the OIV in a
> > most natural way ... it seems to me that the ideal candidate would
> > really be the freetype library (and possible freetype-stubs for
> 
> Yes, this has been brought up before. If anyone has started to work on this,
> please post a note here so there's no duplication of effort.
> 
> > windows). Moreover, there exists a library for rendering TrueType
> > fonts using FreeType (http://gltt.sourceforge.net/) that probably
> > does a big part of what is needed for rendering text in Inventor.
> 

    Hello 

  I am Guy Barrand (the developer of the SoFree 
 package = "yet another Inventor clone"). For the 
 HEPVis library (a library over Inventor for visualizing 
 things for physics) I have developped the 
 SoTextTTF node, something like the SoText2 but 
 over true type fonts. It relies only over OpenGL and libttf.

  I have ported the things (with SoFree) on :
 Linux-gxx, HP-UX-aCC, OSF1-cxx, Sun-CC (4 and 5) 
 and also on NT-CL (CL = Microsoft compiler).
 (SoFree is reconstructable on NT) and all
 my text rendering for physic displays 
 relies now on that.

  Then TTF is cleraly the horse that we/you need
 to get rid of with the font problem.

  If your are interseted, I have also 
 in SoFree a SoMarketSet which is not 
 in the SGIV-2.1 that is on the net,
 but which exists in the 2.5 API of TGS.

  On a general point of view, having
 Inventor open source is something I was
 waiting for long : this is great ! 
 I hope we will be able
 to include the SoFree things under 
 SGI-IV very quickly.
 The huge point I have with SoFree
 that you do not have is the portability,
 including NT. For NT, mainly, I have 
 a "basic" working SoWin and SoGtk that 
 you do not have that permits me to run 
 on these platforms (don't worry I am not
 a doz fanatic).

  I have planned to try a recompilation 
 on NT of the "non-Xt-SGIV-2.1 libInventor" part 
 soon (in September, I am away next week).
 The goal will be to have the "OpenGL" part
 running with my SoWin and SoGtk libs (I have
 been able to do that with the TGS non-Xt-libInventor).

  Note that in my lab I have also someone that
 tries right now to compile things with KCC 
 on Linux (a very strict ANSI compiler) and 
 the situation is really NASTY... Then a first good
 step could be to "cleanup" what exists now before
 putting new features.

  Here is an URL where I have put the code
 for SoTextTTF and SoMarkerSet :

   http://www.sofree.org/sgiv

  Cheers

    Guy Barrand

PS : I am away next week but an the net
     again from the 4th of September.
     (yes, there is still some places without
     any network !)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Guy Barrand                   e-mail: barrand@lal.in2p3.fr
LAL                           Tel: +33 (1) 64 46 84 17
Universite de Paris-Sud       Fax: +33 (1) 69 07 94 04
B.P 34
91898 ORSAY CEDEX France
CERN                          Tel:  41 22 76 78696 (B02-R013)
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