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No bitmap font support since pango 1.44 #4390
Description
Since version 1.44, pango no longer supports bitmap fonts: https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-directions/
Since sway uses pango, this also means no more bitmap fonts in sway. I just wanted to a) make you aware of this, and b) ask what your thoughts on this are?
I for one cannot live without bitmap fonts. At least not on non-high-DPI monitors.
If sway wants to continue supporting bitmap fonts, what kind of solutions would you find acceptable? I'm asking since it would seem this requires either moving away from pango, or at least add support for more font rendering backends?
Activity
emersion commentedon Jul 28, 2019
I don't care a lot about these personally.
In case you missed it:
progandy commentedon Jul 28, 2019
Some useful links for font conversions. It should be possible to convert Type1 fonts to OTF (CFF) fonts and bitmap fonts to bitmap-only TTF/OTF fonts (optionally with a vectorized variant).
https://fontforge.github.io/scripting-tutorial.html
https://github.com/kreativekorp/bitsnpicas
https://github.com/koron/bdf2ttf
https://github.com/dse/bdf2ttf
https://github.com/Tblue/mkttf
DmitryHetman commentedon Jul 28, 2019
Why use ttf fonts in console? Bitmaps looks much better.
DmitryHetman commentedon Jul 28, 2019
you dont have to smooth them etc.
Architector4 commentedon Jul 29, 2019
Subjective, though. I, for one, don't like bitmap fonts, and prefer smooth monospace vector based fonts.
hissssst commentedon Jul 30, 2019
Got my bitmap font
fucked upbroken today, any fix/branch ?emersion commentedon Jul 30, 2019
Use OpenType bitmap fonts.
dnkl commentedon Jul 30, 2019
@hissssst: since re-packaging all my fonts in TTF/OTF isn't really something I wanted to do, I opted to: a) limit my usage of GTK/pango based programs as much as possible, b) use titlebar-less windows in Sway, and instead display the active window's title in the bar (not swaybar though, my own bar), and c) use qt or terminal based applications whenever possible.
Might write a dunst/mako-replacement just for fun as well...
Yeah, I'm not happy, but life goes on.
parkerlreed commentedon Jul 31, 2019
RIP Terminus. Glad I'm still on KDE. Sad to bear.
dnkl commentedon Aug 7, 2019
@parkerlreed @hissssst @DmitryHetman
I've created a fork/PR-that-will-never-be-merged at https://gitlab.com/dnkl/sway. It replaces pango with fontconfig+cairo, which still support bitmap fonts. It's a huge hack, with lots of limitations. See README.md in the fontconfig branch for details and instructions.
I guess it's also a good idea to not comment here anymore - don't beat the dead horse.