[ft-announce] Announcing FreeType 2.8.1

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.8.1 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.

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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http://www.freetype.org


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.


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  I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES

    - B/W  hinting   of  TrueType   fonts  didn't  work   properly  if
      interpreter version 38 or 40 was selected.

    - Some severe  problems within the handling  of TrueType Variation
      Fonts were found and fixed.

    - Function `FT_Set_Var_Design_Coordinates' didn't correctly handle
      the case with less input coordinates than axes.


  II. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - By default,  FreeType  now offers  high  quality  LCD-optimized
      output  without resorting to ClearType techniques of resolution
      tripling and filtering.  In this method,  called Harmony,  each
      color channel is generated separately  after shifting the glyph
      outline,  capitalizing on the fact  that the color grids on LCD
      panels  are  shifted  by  a third  of  a pixel.  This output is
      indistinguishable from ClearType with a light 3-tap filter.


  III. MISCELLANEOUS

    - Using the  new function `FT_Get_Var_Axis_Flags',  an application
      can access the `flags' field  of a variation axis (introduced in
      OpenType version 1.8.2)

    - More sanity checks.

    - The  internal representation  of buffers  for LCD  rendering has
      changed (to be more precise, the amount of padding gets computed
      differently).  Applications  that use  the FreeType API  are not
      affected.

    - To  reset all  design axis  values of  a variation  font to  its
      default values you can now say

        error = FT_Set_Var_Design_Coordinates( face, 0, NULL );

      This  also works  with functions  `FT_Set_MM_Design_Coordinates'
      and `FT_Set_MM_Blend_Coordinates'.

    - FreeType  now synthesizes  a  missing Unicode  cmap for  (older)
      TrueType fonts also if glyph names are available.

    - FreeType  has  improved  handling   of  BDF  fonts  without  the
      `POINT_SIZE', `RESOLUTION_X', or  `RESOLUTION_Y' properties; the
      library now  uses the values of  the `SIZE' keyword if  they are
      missing.   Previously,   `SIZE'  was  completely   ignored,  and
      FreeType used heuristic values instead.

    - Multiple calls to `FT_Bitmap_Convert' do work now as advertised.
      Previously,  they failed with an assertion error if there was an
      empty bitmap between non-empty ones.

    - The warping option  has moved  from `light'  to `normal' hinting
      where  it replaces  the original hinting algorithm.  The `light'
      mode is now always void of any hinting in x-direction.

    - 16bit  compiler  support is  now  officially  ended.  We  didn't
      provide any maintenance  since many years,  and given that there
      were no error  or problem reports either it seems  that it is no
      longer needed.

    - The `ftgrid' demo program can now toggle the display of grid lines
      with the `G' key.

    - The `ftgrid' demo program can toggle a different set of colors
      (suitable to color-blind people) with the `C' key.

    - The `ftgrid' demo program now supports the `-e' command line option
      to select a cmap.

    - The `ftdump' demo program has a new command line option `-t' to
      output the SFNT table list.