Re: When and how to register various font backends

[Michael Welsh Duggan <mwd@md5i.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> But what about being able to specify the backend(s) via
> default-frame-alist in the init file, and expecting that to affect all
> the frames including the initial one?  Mitsuharu's proposal allows
> that, whereas mine doesn't.  That's because in my implementation the
> font backend is registered at frame creation time, and only the
> backends known to be requested at that time are registered.  So when
> we call modify-frame-parameters later, after processing the init file,
> to make default-frame-alist parameters take effect, you cannot request
> a backend that wasn't registered.
>
> By contrast, Mitsuharu's method registers all the backends, but only
> activates some of them.  So modify-frame-parameters can work, because
> it just needs to activate an already registered backend.
>
> I hope the difference is clearer now, and people can voice their
> opinions.

I find that I, at some point, specified a font-backend ordering by
modifying the default-frame-alist in my init file.  So, although my
reasons for doing that are by now obscure and possibly defunct, I did,
at least, assume that this would work at some time in the past.

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(md5i@md5i.com)