From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
Cc: 51658@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#51658: [PATCH] Haiku port (again)
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 16:19:49 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <83tugk2iuy.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87o86s41at.fsf@yahoo.com> (message from Po Lu on Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:56:10 +0800)
> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: 51658@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:56:10 +0800
>
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > Too bad. IMNSHO, that's a ticking time bomb, and it will certainly
> > bite us at some point, since mixing C and C++ is tricky and requires a
> > lot of diligence. It also means that you will probably be unable to
> > use any compiler but GCC (or whatever is currently supported by
> > Haiku), since different C++ compilers are generally
> > binary-incompatible.
>
> AFAIU, the Haiku developers only support GCC for compiling C++ code, as
> they have a requirement to keep support for old BeOS software, which
> depends on the GCC ABI.
And for a good reason. Then I think you should remove the part of
configure.ac that looks for other C++ compilers, as that is entirely
unnecessary, and probably will always be.
> > Since you later say Cairo is unreliable, why not drop Cairo?
>
> What I meant by "unreliable" is that the Haiku developers tend to tweak
> their Cairo package in various manners, which breaks the Emacs build.
>
> People building Cairo themselves won't experience this problem, but
> building the BeOS cairo backend is... tricky, to say the least. I
> managed to get it to work, but there is a lot of pain involved in it
> that I wouldn't want to repeat.
>
> The Haiku developers have a package repository and build automation
> system that would make this easy, should they ship the Haiku port of
> Emacs in the future. (At present, they only ship Emacs built to run in
> a TTY.)
>
> So it is useful to have Cairo around, for people whom it is useful, but
> if not, it would be good to have something to fall back to.
>
> > And that still leaves us with 3 backends, IIUC. Why not just one?
>
> Well, one of those backends is simply a HarfBuzz variant of the other,
> which is how xftfont and ftcrfont do it, and IIUC, that's how it works
> under MS-Windows too.
The other platforms have past history, which Haiku doesn't. And we
plan on removing more old backends in the future; for example
Uniscribe for Windows will die soon enough because MS deprecated it,
and it is not being developed anymore, so falls behind in supporting
new scripts and features.
> So, if we keep only the haikufont backend (for Haiku users who don't
> want to install FreeType or Cairo), and one of `ftbe' or cairo font
> support, there will really just be two font backends.
OK, let's go with two. I understand that both will use HarfBuzz? I'd
prefer not to have backends that use other shaping engines, unless
Haiku has some shaping engine that is better than HarfBuzz.
> Aside from not depending on Cairo or FreeType, which are not always
> available on Haiku, it also comes with the advantage of being fast even
> on remote sessions (not unlike X11 remote access), as characters drawn
> are sent down the wire as plain text, instead of as bitmap data, which
> is very slow when operating over a remote connection.
>
> So I think it will be useful as a fallback in many cases.
I hope you will reconsider. Having a niche platform with 3 font
backends is really too much. Especially since Emacs 29 learned to
display Emoji now, and we are talking about adding decent support for
ligatures, both of which require a shaping engine.
> > So my suggestion is to choose wisely which features you really need to
> > keep.
>
> Yes, thanks.
OK, please post an updated patch, and we'll take it from there.
Thanks.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-11-10 14:19 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <87ee7surtv.fsf.ref@yahoo.com>
2021-11-07 11:29 ` bug#51658: [PATCH] Haiku port (again) Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-09 17:58 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-10 0:00 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-10 4:33 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-10 12:38 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-10 12:56 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-10 14:19 ` Eli Zaretskii [this message]
2021-11-11 0:27 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-11 6:51 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-11 7:40 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-13 18:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-14 1:08 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-14 7:54 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-14 9:36 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-14 10:28 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-14 10:39 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-14 10:54 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-14 11:06 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-15 2:59 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 7:03 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 8:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-20 9:34 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 9:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-20 13:08 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 13:30 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-20 13:33 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 13:41 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-20 13:45 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 13:55 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-11-20 13:51 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2021-11-20 14:15 ` Eli Zaretskii
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=83tugk2iuy.fsf@gnu.org \
--to=eliz@gnu.org \
--cc=51658@debbugs.gnu.org \
--cc=luangruo@yahoo.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).