Font rendering system overhaul

[rattle]

Are you going to work on outlined fonts?
I've heard the fonts on the loading screen aren't outlined anymore making them hard to read on bright loading pics etc.

[LordMatt]

Unfortunately I don't note any FPS increase with the latest SVN.

[dizekat]

Well, the "funky matrix manipulations" are easily invertible, there is nothing complicated about it if you know how matrix mathematics work. The only issue could be glGetMatrix being slow with some bad drivers, though AFAIK most card drivers compute matrices on CPU when you call glMulMatrix and the like, and dont have to fetch matrix from graphics card (which would indeed be slow). In my software i keep track of current matrix myself, for screen->gl and gl->screen conversions

As for speed improvements... i don't think removal of display list per glyph/quad could make any speed improvements, with good drivers that implement display lists efficiently. The single texture versus many textures, that may save some display memory and texture switches, but again AFAIK modern drivers do texture switches efficiently, when using lists.
GL stuff always needs to be properly benchmarked, for changes like this you cant just guess performance.

[Tobi]

The point about the matrix manipulations was that it was using the antipattern of having setup and takedown code before and after the routine call, not so much that matrix manipulations can be hard to understand to some people.