Why is FontForge based on a non-standard widget set?
I wanted a widget set that would handle Unicode reasonably well. In particular I thought support for bidi text was important for hebrew and arabic typography. As I was unaware of any widget sets that did that, I wrote my own. I also wanted a widget set where I could actually figure out whether the checkbox was checked or not checked. In far too many cases my eyes can’t work out which is which… (Ironically the most frequent complaint I get is from people who can’t tell whether my checkboxes are checked. I don’t know what to make of that). I realize now that that there are essentially two free widget sets that are far better at unicode support than mine. These are QT and gtk. I’m still not using either because: • Converting from one set of widgets to another is tedious. And people send me bugs which distract me. • If I spend my time doing that conversion I won’t be making FontForge more functional. • QT is written in C++, and, as I explain below, I don’t like C++, so that’s out. • The
