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     CACHECHARS(2)                                       CACHECHARS(2)

     NAME
          cachechars, agefont, loadchar, Subfont, Fontchar, Font  -
          font utilities

     SYNOPSIS
          #include <u.h>
          #include <libc.h>
          #include <draw.h>

          int  cachechars(Font *f, char **s, Rune **r, ushort *c, int
          max,

                       int *widp, char **sfname)

          int  loadchar(Font *f, Rune r, Cacheinfo *c, int h,

                       int noclr, char **sfname)

          void agefont(Font *f)

     DESCRIPTION
          A Font may contain too many characters to hold in memory
          simultaneously.  The graphics library and draw device (see
          draw(3)) cooperate to solve this problem by maintaining a
          cache of recently used character images.  The details of
          this cooperation need not be known by most programs:
          initdraw and its associated font variable, openfont,
          stringwidth, string, and freefont are sufficient for most
          purposes.  The routines described below are used internally
          by the graphics library to maintain the font cache.

          A Subfont is a set of images for a contiguous range of char-
          acters, stored as a single image with the characters placed
          side-by-side on a common baseline.  It is described by the
          following data structures.

               typedef
               struct Fontchar {
                     int      x;        /* left edge of bits */
                     uchar    top;      /* first non-zero scan-line */
                     uchar    bottom;   /* last non-zero scan-line */
                     char     left;     /* offset of baseline */
                     uchar    width;    /* width of baseline */
               } Fontchar;

               typedef
               struct Subfont {
                     char     *name;
                     short    n;        /* number of chars in subfont */
                     uchar    height;   /* height of image */

     CACHECHARS(2)                                       CACHECHARS(2)

                     char     ascent;   /* top of image to baseline */
                     Fontchar *info;    /* n+1 Fontchars */
                     Image    *bits;    /* of font */
               } Subfont;

          The image fills the rectangle (0, 0, w, height), where w is
          the sum of the horizontal extents (of non-zero pixels) for
          all characters.  The pixels to be displayed for character c
          are in the rectangle (i->x, i->top, (i+1)->x, i->bottom)
          where i is &subfont->info[c].  When a character is displayed
          at Point p in an image, the character rectangle is placed at
          (p.x+i->left, p.y) and the next character of the string is
          displayed at (p.x+i->width, p.y).  The baseline of the char-
          acters is `ascent' rows down from the top of the subfont
          image.  The `info' array has n+1 elements, one each for
          characters 0 to n-1 plus an additional entry so the size of
          the last character can be calculated.  Thus the width, w, of
          the Image associated with a Subfont s is s->info[s->n].x.

          A Font consists of an overall height and ascent and a col-
          lection of subfonts together with the ranges of runes (see
          utf(6)) they represent.  Fonts are described by the follow-
          ing structures.

               typedef
               struct Cachefont {
                     Rune      min;      /* value of 0th char in subfont */
                     Rune      max;      /* value+1 of last char in subfont */
                     int       offset;   /* posn in subfont of char at min */
                     char      *name;    /* stored in font */
                     char      *subfontname;/* to access subfont */
               } Cachefont;

               typedef
               struct Cacheinfo {
                     ushort    x;        /* left edge of bits */
                     uchar     width;    /* width of baseline */
                     schar     left;     /* offset of baseline */
                     Rune      value;    /* of char at this slot in cache */
                     ushort    age;
               } Cacheinfo;

               typedef
               struct Cachesubf {
                     ulong     age;      /* for replacement */
                     Cachefont *cf;      /* font info that owns us */
                     Subfont   *f;       /* attached subfont */
               } Cachesubf;

               typedef
               struct Font {
                     char      *name;

     CACHECHARS(2)                                       CACHECHARS(2)

                     Display   *display;
                     short     height;   /* max ht of image;interline space*/
                     short     ascent;   /* top of image to baseline */
                     short     width;    /* widest so far; used in caching */
                     short     nsub;     /* number of subfonts */
                     ulong     age;      /* increasing counter; for LRU */
                     int       ncache;   /* size of cache */
                     int       nsubf;    /* size of subfont list */
                     Cacheinfo *cache;
                     Cachesubf *subf;
                     Cachefont **sub;    /* as read from file */
                     Image     *cacheimage;
               } Font;

          The `height' and `ascent' fields of Font are described in
          graphics(2). `Sub' contains `nsub' pointers to Cachefonts.
          A Cachefont connects runes `min' through `max', inclusive,
          to the subfont with file name `name'; it corresponds to a
          line of the file describing the font.

          The characters are taken from the subfont starting at char-
          acter number `offset' (usually zero) in the subfont, permit-
          ting selection of parts of subfonts.  Thus the image for
          rune r is found in position r-min+offset of the subfont.

          For each font, the library, with support from the graphics
          server, maintains a cache of subfonts and a cache of
          recently used character images.  The subf and cache fields
          are used by the library to maintain these caches.  The
          `width' of a font is the maximum of the horizontal extents
          of the characters in the cache.  String draws a string by
          loading the cache and emitting a sequence of cache indices
          to draw.  Cachechars guarantees the images for the charac-
          ters pointed to by *s or *r (one of these must be nil in
          each call) are in the cache of f. It calls loadchar to put
          missing characters into the cache.  Cachechars translates
          the character string into a set of cache indices which it
          loads into the array c, up to a maximum of n indices or the
          length of the string.  Cachechars returns in c the number of
          cache indices emitted, updates *s to point to the next char-
          acter to be processed, and sets *widp to the total width of
          the characters processed.  Cachechars may return before the
          end of the string if it cannot proceed without destroying
          active data in the caches.  If it needs to load a new sub-
          font, it will fill *sfname with the name of the subfont it
          needs and return -1.  It can return zero if it is unable to
          make progress because it cannot resize the caches.

          Loadchar loads a character image into the character cache.
          Then it tells the graphics server to copy the character into
          position h in the character cache.  If the current font
          `width' is smaller than the horizontal extent of the

     CACHECHARS(2)                                       CACHECHARS(2)

          character being loaded, loadfont clears the cache and resets
          it to accept characters with the bigger width, unless noclr
          is set, in which case it just returns -1.  If the character
          does not exist in the font at all, loadfont returns 0; if it
          is unable to load the character without destroying cached
          information, it returns -1, updating *sfname as described
          above.  It returns 1 to indicate success.

          The `age' fields record when subfonts and characters have
          been used.  The font `age' is increased every time the font
          is used (agefont does this).  A character or subfont `age'
          is set to the font age at each use.  Thus, characters or
          subfonts with small ages are the best candidates for
          replacement when the cache is full.

     SOURCE
          /sys/src/libdraw

     SEE ALSO
          graphics(2), allocimage(2), draw(2), subfont(2), image(6),
          font(6)

     DIAGNOSTICS
          All of the functions use the graphics error function (see
          graphics(2)).