X-TT v.s. xfsft

  The "After X-TT Project" has released X-TT 1.4.1, which now
includes bug fixes that are related to design differences between
XFree86 and "xtt".

  To advertize its performance, we've attached a partial quotation of the 
"TechStyle" newsletter article in this posting.

  Hyoma Utsugi has written a benchmark evaluation article entitled
"Coming Soon:  Super-fast Font Loading with the Release of X-TT 1.4,"
published in "TechStyle Newsletter" No.57 (May 14,2003).
Permission for translation and its quotation for this posting was 
granted by Utsugi Hyoma and TechStyle.


  ==== TechStyle Newsletter No.57 ================

  ** Performance Improvement by a Factor of 20 - 30 **

  To see exactly how its performance has improved, I've conducted a simple
  test.  I've used the Bitstream "Cyberbit.ttf" unicode font which is 
  distributed for free, and measured the time it took for the xfd to appear 
  on X.

  Had we used the "xfd" command without modification, the "Quit" button
  needs to be clicked on to exit the application after the window has
  appeared on screen.  This makes it difficult to obtain the elapsed time
  using the "time" command, so I have modified the "xfd" code for this 
  evaluation.  Specifically, I have commented out the XtAppMainLoop() 
  function in main() so that the application exits immediately after 
  displaying the window.

  The combination XFree86 4.3.0 + X-TT 1.4.0.rc1 was used for testing,
  measuring the following three cases:

     - xfsft
     - X-TT 1.4 without the TTCap option
     - X-TT 1.4 with the TTCap option

  For the "with TTCap option" case, the option has been set to
  "fc=0x3400-0xe7ff:fm=0x5a00".  This particular option setting
  indicates that "xtt" handles the glyphs that are within the CJK 
  region (in unicode) with constant spacing, whose metrics are 
  similar to that of "0x5a00".

  Following are the results.

             +--------------------------------+-------------+
             | test case                      |  time       |
             +--------------------------------+-------------+
             | xfsft                          |  2.623 sec. |
             +--------------------------------+-------------+
             | X-TT 1.4 without TTCap options |  3.994 sec. |
             +--------------------------------+-------------+
             | X-TT 1.4 with TTCap options    |  0.167 sec. |
             +--------------------------------+-------------+

  Incidentally, when the "vl=y" option (which has been available in 
  the past) was added to the "with TTCap option" setting, the
  benchmark was further shortened to 0.128 second.  This 
  "vl=y" option enables the "very lazy" metric calculation to
  speed up the process.  Since this option generally has minimal 
  effect on font appearances, it is highly recommened for everyday use.


             -----------------------------------------------------
             Copyright (c) 2003 Hyoma Utsugi / TechStyle Co., Ltd.
             -----------------------------------------------------

  ================
------------------------------------------------------------
    Chisato Yamauchi
    After X-TT Project