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1997-10-06
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A Brief history of the FreeType project
by David Turner
------------------------------
The idea of writing a TrueType engine came to me in December 95, when I
decided that my beloved OS/2 deserves something much better than the ugly
font engine provided by IBM. My original goal was to produce an
OS/2-specific font DLL that could replace or co-exist with the so sick
"PmAtm" from Adobe. Unfortunately, I could not get my hands on any piece of
information regarding a similarly top-secret IBM spec called the
'Intelligent Font Interface', which forced me to develop a portable and
system independent version.
This turned out to be much easier than expected, as everything was written
in Pascal, a language that fits my own 'zen-of-programming' best (faster
compiles, smart linking, great IDEs, simple and strong-typed language...).
Two Pascal compilers were used alternatively, namely OS/2's Virtual Pascal
(VP) from fPrint, and an old copy of Borland's Pascal 7 (BP7). For all of
you Pascal freaks, VP *is* a Bomb! It is *my* OS/2 killer app!
During Feb/March 96, my social life did not let me the time to keep up the
development of the engine for several months. I am glad to be back on it
since October, moreover being nearly on vacations until Jan 97, with lots ot
time to spend on it! Luckily, some real cool guy even sent me the OS/2 specs
I was awaiting for so long (I really don't know where he got these, hope he
didn't break an NDA...). By the way, the new OS/2 4.0 (a.k.a. Merlin) has
also built-in TrueType support, but one that I consider 'lousy'!
After uploading the engine to some few archives, I began receiving requests
for a C version, which I began to write with Robert Wilhelm, one guy insane
enough to propose himself in the porting of the engine to WINE (the Linux
Windows Emulator) ;-) Though it happened to be faster that I myself port a
first version, he is now in charge of the Linux/C port (together with Werner
Lemberg) and its development. We'll try to synchronize the sources as often
as possible.
This archive contains now both versions, and should enlighten young and old
programmers alike ;-) Please bear always in mind that this is still an alpha
release; some parts do not reflect yet the engine as it will be in its final
stage.
I'm optimistic about the project; we hope to see a beta release for
christmas 96 (crossing my fingers...)
^^^^^^^^^^^^
!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sidenote (written in Apr 97):
Sorry, but due to a surprisingly poor specification, the interpreter
has been the cause of much, much work. Fortunately, we now match the
quality of the glyphs rendered by Windows and the Macintosh!
Try the 'view' program to get an idea ;-)
--- End of history.txt ---