FreeType project ported to RDOS kernel device driver

[rdos]

I have the basics of FreeType working now in kernel mode. This is my second C based device-driver (ACPI was the first one), which seems to work well in 32-bit compact memory model. The only problem with FreeType is that the designers have never heard of multitasking, so there is a need to rewrite the upper layers with proper locking. But the TrueType renderer at least work with standard Windows font files (like Arial), and have a gray-scale anti-aliasing algorithm that uses 256 levels!

The goal is to fully support UTF-8 in the GUI, so I don't need special font-files.

[bubach]

Do you have some cool screenshots or maybe an img file that we could comment on?

[Owen]

From the documentation...

A handle to a FreeType library instance. Each ‘library’ is completely independent from the others; it is the ‘root’ of a set of objects like fonts, faces, sizes, etc.

It also embeds a memory manager (see FT_Memory), as well as a scan-line converter object (see FT_Raster).

For multi-threading applications each thread should have its own FT_Library object.

[rdos]

I now have a functional device-driver. It can either be compiled with super-secure segmentation where every FreeType object gets it own selector and precise limit, and every glyph entry gets it own selector as well, or with a less secure version that uses the kernel flat selector. During the debug phase I use segmentation, while in the release phase I'll use a flat selector in order not to exhaust GDT entries. Because of this design, I now know there are no memory overwrites in the code. The new fonts works with our terminal, and with a few test apps I have. At least for 32-bit VBE. I need to update 24, 16 and 1 bit interfaces as well.