| RE: [AD] Font loadin: Feature Request |
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On 28 Nov 2001 at 15:38, Shawn Hargreaves wrote:
> > I think it's pretty strange that the FONT is the only data
> > which cannot be loaded directly.
>
> People keep raising this as a 'problem', and I have to say,
> I've never understood why.
Well, to be honest, I think it's because most people find this:
FONT *font = load_font("font.fnt#AFONT");
More readable than this:
DATAFILE *dat = load_datafile_object("font.fnt", "AFONT");
FONT *font = dat->dat;
unload_datafile_object(dat);
> For one thing, what is 'not direct' about writing:
>
> FONT *font = load_datafile("font.dat")->dat;
>
> If it really bothers you so much to be doing this with a
> datafile, why not just rename font.dat to font.font, and
> #define load_datafile() to load_font()?
And then skip reading datafiles at all? :)
> More seriously, the reason there is no dedicated load_font()
> function is that there is no useful font format, either.
> Samples and bitmaps already have standard file formats
> that are useful for Allegro to support, but there is a lack
> of widespread font formats that match the type of bitmap
> font Allegro wants to use (sure, you can write loaders
> for things like .ttf files, but those are complicated and
> belong in addons).
Not to mention the fact that ttf loading (especially with smoothing) is
soooo slow (if you want proof, try Allegttf).
> So, you need some sort of conversion process to turn
> bitmaps into something that Allegro can use as a font.
> There is no point doing this at load time - wherever
> possible, it makes more sense to preconvert your data
> in an offline tool, so the runtime loader can be very
> small and simple. Hence the grabber.
> We could invent an "Allegro font" format, but that would
> be stupid because it would end up exactly the same as
> a datafile, maybe just with a different file header or
> something. There's no point doing that when a perfectly
> suitable file format and loader code already exists...
>
It may be stupid but it could make for controlled redundancy, iow it
makes for easier coding, but more code to write and more files to
maintain.
> --
> Shawn
>
I suggest that you write a load_font() function, one way or another. One
way would be to write a font structure from scratch, and a datafile-alike
format with it. The other way would - I guess - be that you make it an
inline function that loads a datafile, makes a FONT * point to its dat
pointer, and unload the datafile.