Re: [ft] Faster computation of text width?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 22:05:44 +0200, John Found wrote:

> About the C snippets - unfortunately, I can only read C and only if
> it is not so complex. This way I simply can't provide C code snippets
> at all.

The computing world does not revolve around x86. Open-source software
regularly also runs on architectures like ARM and MIPS (both I think
particularly relevant for an embedding-targeted project like FreeType),
and even less common ones like PowerPC.

You may not realize it, but ARM chips alone currently outship x86 by
about 20:1. Or, to put it another way, more ARM chips ship per year
than the entire population of the Earth. Even MIPS chips ship more than
x86, making the latter only the number 3 computer architecture in the
world.

So with all this variety of hardware, writing things in assembly is
usually not practical. Like it or not, C is the lingua franca of
open-source development. Other languages are commonly found too (e.g.
Python, which I used for my FreeType-related project), but C remains
the common denominator.

So take the time to learn C: think of it as an investment in your own
future.