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TrueType Font Libraries in C

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 15:08:45 GMT

Along the lines of investigating portable C GUI libraries, I started looking at cross-platform library options for font rendering in C. This area is particularly useful if you're investigating creating your own GUI library or game library. I was most interested in the TrueType font rendering libraries and techniques. It was rather surprising to read just how difficult it is to get simple internationalized text to the screen especially using graphics libraries like OpenGL.

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GUI library design

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 15:00:28 GMT

Some of the C graphics libraries are great, but I've yet to find a simple GUI that makes it easy to port some older BASIC programs that I want to be able to keep working with. I've created several iterations of my own GUI library, but have never been satisfied with the results. That's the main reason I keep investigating cross-platform GUIs, to see if someone's found a better way to do it. Of the various designs, the ideas behind the immediate mode GUIs seem the most useful for the type of programs I'm targeting. However, I can't seem to find one GUI library that provides a simple way to do what I want. So, I've decided to revisit my old GUI library designs but eliminate some of the framework constraints and some of the object oriented elements. Instead, I'm looking at a more procedural approach that uses concepts from immediate mode GUIs.

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Cross-platform GUI libraries

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 19:16:30 GMT

GUI libraries

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PDF and Postscript

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 18:58:27 GMT

Some interesting Open Source command line programs output their results in Postscript and/or PDF format. That makes it useful to have lightweight PDF and PostScript viewers that don't require a lot of dependencies to build so you can view their output quickly. It's also nice on Linux systems if they work in framebuffer mode, so you don't have to start an X Windows session just to view results. Cross-platform viewers work on a variety of systems from Linux and Mac to Windows to DOS and even Android. Having tools to edit/modify PDF and PostScript output is also useful.

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