[ft-announce] FreeType 2.4.12 has been released

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.4.12 has been released.

It is available from

    http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/freetype/

or

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/files/

The latter site also holds older versions of the FreeType library.

See below for  the relevant snippet  from the  CHANGES file; all users
should upgrade.

Enjoy!


   Werner


PS: Downloads from savannah.nongnu.org will redirect to your nearest
    mirror site.  Files on mirrors may be subject to a replication
    delay of up to 24 hours.  In case of problems use
    http://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/


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FreeType 2  is a software  font engine that  is designed to  be small,
efficient,  highly   customizable,  and  portable   while  capable  of
producing high-quality output (glyph images) of most vector and bitmap
font formats.

Note that  FreeType 2 is  a font service  and doesn't provide  APIs to
perform higher-level features, like text layout or graphics processing
(e.g.,  colored  text  rendering,  `hollowing',  etc.).   However,  it
greatly simplifies these tasks by providing a simple, easy to use, and
uniform interface to access the content of font files.

FreeType  2  is  released  under  two open-source  licenses:  our  own
BSD-like FreeType  License and the  GPL.  It can  thus be used  by any
kind of projects, be they proprietary or not.


----------------------------------------------------------------------


CHANGES BETWEEN 2.4.11 and 2.4.12

  I. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - We have another CFF parsing and hinting engine!  Written by Dave
      Arnold <address@hidden>,  this work  has been  contributed by
      Adobe in  collaboration with Google.   It is vastly  superior to
      the old CFF engine, and it  will replace it in the next release.
      Right  now,  it  is  still  off by  default,  and  you  have  to
      explicitly select it using  the new `hinting-engine' property of
      the cff driver:

        ...
        #include FT_MODULE_H
        #include FT_CFF_DRIVER_H

        FT_Library  library;
        int         engine = FT_CFF_HINTING_ADOBE;


        ...
        FT_Property_Set( library, "cff", "hinting-engine", &engine );

      The code has  a (mature) beta status; we encourage  all users to
      test it and report any problems.

      In case you want to activate the new CFF engine unconditionally,
      apply this patch:

--- snip ---
diff --git a/src/cff/cffobjs.c b/src/cff/cffobjs.c
index ebcf189..3f2ce6b 100644
--- a/src/cff/cffobjs.c
+++ b/src/cff/cffobjs.c
@@ -1056,7 +1056,7 @@


     /* set default property values */
-    driver->hinting_engine    = FT_CFF_HINTING_FREETYPE;
+    driver->hinting_engine    = FT_CFF_HINTING_ADOBE;
     driver->no_stem_darkening = FALSE;

     return FT_Err_Ok;
--- snip ---

    - The  macro FT_CONFIG_OPTION_OLD_INTERNALS  is no  longer set  by
      default.  In  the next  release, we  will completely  remove the
      associated code.   Please update your  programs in case  you are
      still using this macro.


  II. MISCELLANEOUS

    - The  (top-level)  `configure'  script   now  respects  the  MAKE
      environment variable to specify a `make' binary.   For backwards
      compatibility, GNUMAKE still overrides MAKE, though.

    - The `ftview'  and `ftdiff'  demo programs have  been redesigned,
      showing  more options  permanently  on the  screen, among  other
      minor improvements.

    - Using the `H'  key, it is now possible to  select the CFF engine
      in both `ftview' and `ftdiff'.

    - The new command line option `-H' for `ftbench' selects the Adobe
      CFF engine.

    - It is  now possible  to directly select  the LCD  rendering mode
      with the keys `A'-`F' in  `ftview'.  The key mapping for cycling
      through LCD modes  has been changed from `K' and  `L' to `k' and
      `l', and  toggling custom LCD  filtering is no longer  mapped to
      key `F' but to key `L'.

    - In `ftdiff',  key `x' toggles  between layout modes:  Either use
      the  advance width  (this is  new and  now the  default) or  the
      bounding box information to determine line breaks.

    - For all demo  tools, the new command line option  `-v' shows the
      version.

    - For the demo tools with a GUI, the new command line options `-w'
      and `-h' select  the width and the height of  the output window,
      respectively.

    - The `ttdebug' program was broken and has been reactivated.  Note
      that this program is not compiled by default.