README.md

# allegro_schrift
Drop-in replacement for Allegro_TTF that contains libschrift, instead of using FreeType2.

It is 100% API compatible with the vanilla TrueType addon. Compile Allegro with these files inside of `/addons/ttf`.

Pros:
- It doesn't require NT 6 kernel calls
- It doesn't dynamically link against hundreds of thousands of lines of ugly corporate-backed C code you can't read
  - Our addon is only a couple or few hundred lines, and libschrift is less than 2,000. They're compiled together.  
  The original Allegro_TTF is over 1,000 lines (for a good reason) and has a relatively massive dependency weight (for a stupid reason).

Caveats:
- Pre-stretching is not implemented.
- The entire caching system is gone, fonts are baked to textures immediately and no further. This makes supporting some languages with this add-on inconvenient, or impossible.  
If your usecase doesn't need every fancy rendering feature and can use schrift, you probably aren't supporting enough characters and languages to need on-the-fly caching, so we consider this an acceptable tradeoff.
    - The `cache_text` setting in allegro5.cfg is now reused to determine what glyphs can be rendered at all. `skip_cache_misses` has no effect.  
    When `cache_text` is undefined, the English and Romance alphabets will be generated by default.
Add README.md 2026-09-12 06:45:24 +00:00			`# allegro_schrift`
			`Drop-in replacement for Allegro_TTF that contains libschrift, instead of using FreeType2.`

			It is 100% API compatible with the vanilla TrueType addon. Compile Allegro with these files inside of `/addons/ttf`.

sync 2026-09-14 17:44:01 -05:00			`Pros:`
			`- It doesn't require NT 6 kernel calls`
			`- It doesn't dynamically link against hundreds of thousands of lines of ugly corporate-backed C code you can't read`
			`- Our addon is only a couple or few hundred lines, and libschrift is less than 2,000. They're compiled together.`
			`The original Allegro_TTF is over 1,000 lines (for a good reason) and has a relatively massive dependency weight (for a stupid reason).`

Add README.md 2026-09-12 06:45:24 +00:00			`Caveats:`
sync 2026-09-14 17:44:01 -05:00			`- Pre-stretching is not implemented.`
			`- The entire caching system is gone, fonts are baked to textures immediately and no further. This makes supporting some languages with this add-on inconvenient, or impossible.`
			`If your usecase doesn't need every fancy rendering feature and can use schrift, you probably aren't supporting enough characters and languages to need on-the-fly caching, so we consider this an acceptable tradeoff.`
			- The `cache_text` setting in allegro5.cfg is now reused to determine what glyphs can be rendered at all. `skip_cache_misses` has no effect.
			When `cache_text` is undefined, the English and Romance alphabets will be generated by default.