Re: xterm with combining characters

[Keith Packard <keithp@xxxxxxxx>]

> At the moment, the fixed fonts have spacing combining characters, i.e.,
> every combining character is as wide as a normal character. Some other
> proportional fonts (e.g., those by B&H and Mark Leisher) have zero-width
> combining characters with link left of the origin. I am wondering,
> whether I should also do this for the fixed fonts.

If you change this characteristic of fixed-width fonts, they are no longer
fixed width and you'll certainly break any application which uses them and
depends on each glyph being the specified width.  In particular, xterm
assumes each glyph on the screen takes the same space and will misdraw
selections and repainted areas without this invarient.  This will make such
fonts unsuitable for use with these applications.

Additionally, you'll lose the acceleration in the X server provided for
fixed-width fonts, which is probably tolerable as text output speed is plenty
fast on most hardware.  On my machine, 6x13 text draws at 2530000.0 glyphs/sec
while 10-pixel Times Roman draws at 1410000.0 glyphs/sec.

-keith


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