Bug 7866

Summary: Truetype support needs ttf2pt1
Product: xprint Reporter: Drew Parsons <dparsons>
Component: Server: Font engine: FreeTypeAssignee: Drew Parsons <dparsons>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: high CC: MostAwesomedude
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: x86 (IA32)   
OS: Linux (All)   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description Drew Parsons 2006-08-12 22:41:21 UTC
Xprint's Truetype font support uses ttf2pt1, which I understand converts the
font files to postscript type 1 format.  In the monolithic build ttf2pt1 was
kept in the extras directory and symlinked in when building Xprint. A patch to
ttf2pt1 was made to let the ttf2pt1 code get called from inside Xprt. The patch
also adds a couple of extra parameters to specified the required glyphs that
need to be converted (the original upstream version does all of them at once).

In modular X11R7 the idea is for X.org to not keep their own copy of "extra"
material. However because of the patch Xprint makes on ttfpt1, it's not as
simple as just removing ttf2pt1 from the Xorg repository and using it externally.

Furthermore the ttf2pt1 license seems to be the old BSD one with the noxious
advertising clause, so Adam Jackson has indicated he's not comfortable keeping
it in because of that.

There are a handful of solutions, none particularly trivial: 
1) Patch upstream so it can externally perform the required actions (add a
couple of extra parameters to restrict the glyph range) 
2) Petition upstream to update the license to the modern BSD one.
3) Rewrite the code so that ttf2pt1 is no longer used at all.

Anyone, feel free to implement any of these solutions. 

 I'll try contacting the ttf2pt1 authors when I get a spare moment.  They don't
seem to be active these days, however.

Debian contains a patch putting the ttf2pt1 source in an extras directory below
hw/xprint, as a workaround for the time being.
Comment 1 Corbin Simpson 2011-09-13 15:54:45 UTC
Closing WONTFIX because nobody cares about Xprint. Reopen if you plan to address this bug.

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