[ft] Announcing FreeType version 2.7

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.7 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/


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


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.


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



CHANGES BETWEEN 2.6.5 and 2.7

  I. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - As announced earlier, the 2.7.x series now uses the new subpixel
      hinting  mode as  the  default, emulating  a  modern version  of
      ClearType.

      This change inevitably leads to different rendering results, and
      you   might   change   the   `TT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_HINTING'
      configuration option to  adapt it to your taste (or  use the new
      `FREETYPE_PROPERTIES'    environment    variable).

    - A new option  `FT_CONFIG_OPTION_ENVIRONMENT_PROPERTIES' has been
      introduced.   If  set (which  is  the  default), an  environment
      variable  `FREETYPE_PROPERTIES' can  be used  to control  driver
      properties.  Example:

        FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 \
                            cff:no-stem-darkening=1 \
                            autofitter:warping=1

      This allows to select, say, the subpixel hinting mode at runtime
      for a given application.  See file `ftoption.h' for more.


  II. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES

    - After  loading a  named instance  of  a GX  variation font,  the
      `face_index'  value  in  the returned  `FT_Face'  structure  now
      correctly holds the named instance  index in the upper 16bits as
      documented.


  III. MISCELLANEOUS

    - A new macro `FT_IS_NAMED_INSTANCE' to  test whether a given face
      is a named instance.

    - More fixes to GX font handling.

    - Apple's   `GETVARIATION'  bytecode   operator  (needed   for  GX
      variation font support) has been implemented.

    - Another round  of fuzzer fixes,  mainly to reject  invalid fonts
      faster.

    - Handling of raw CID fonts  was broken (bug introduced in version
      2.6.4).

    - The smooth rasterizer has been streamlined  to make it faster by
      approx. 20%.

    - The `ftgrid'  demo program now  understands command  line option
      `-d' to give start-up design coordinates.

    - The `ftdump' demo program has  a new command line option `-p' to
      dump TrueType bytecode instructions.