[Fontconfig] Re: Problem with make install under mingw

Tor Lillqvist fontconfig@fontconfig.org
Fri, 25 Apr 2003 05:29:17 +0300


Nicholas Wourms writes:
 > It's a set of development tools which allow you to compile 
 > unix-style code into MFC/Win32 native binaries&libraries 

Umm, you are a bit mixed up here. Mingw is a port of gcc and binutils
to Win32. I wouldn't say that, in general, it allows you to build
"unix-style" code much more than for instance MSVC does. It uses the
Microsoft C library, which does have some Unixish non-ANSI stuff like
open()/read()/write()/close().

(Well actually, the latest mingw versions have an auxiliary library
and header files that provide a little more Unixishness, but only such
that can easily be emulated using what's in the Microsoft C library,
or Win32 API. I.e. no fork(), fcntl(), mmap(), etc.)

In no way does MFC come into the picture. In fact, unless I'm
mistaken, it's not even possible to compile MFC code with gcc, as MFC
uses some Microsoft C++ extensions.

 > However, to my knowledge there is no native X11 support in Windows
 > (XonX style), so I really fail to see the point in building
 > fontconfig for it.

Umm, fontconfig doesnn't depend on X11.

 > [Of course, I could be wrong and someone has figured out a use for
 > a native Win32 api version of fontconfig...]

Yep. The Pango Freetype2 backend uses fontconfig, which was the reason
why fontonfig needed to be ported to Windows, too.

--tml