Freetype font support; full UTF-8 support; dropped pixel fonts

1 files changed, 38 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/PLUGINS.html b/PLUGINS.html
index 64034538..dc725a51 100644
--- a/PLUGINS.html
+++ b/PLUGINS.html
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 <center><h1>The VDR Plugin System</h1></center>
 
-<center><b>Version 1.5.1</b></center>
+<center><b>Version 1.5.3</b></center>
 <p>
 <center>
 Copyright &copy; 2006 Klaus Schmidinger<br>
@@ -14,12 +14,15 @@ Copyright &copy; 2006 Klaus Schmidinger<br>
 <a href="http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr">www.cadsoft.de/vdr</a>
 </center>
 <p>
-<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#00AA00>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 Important modifications introduced in version 1.5.0 are marked like this.
 <!--X1.5.0--></td></tr></table>
-<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 Important modifications introduced in version 1.5.1 are marked like this.
 <!--X1.5.1--></td></tr></table>
+<!--X1.5.3--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+Important modifications introduced in version 1.5.3 are marked like this.
+<!--X1.5.3--></td></tr></table>
 <p>
 VDR provides an easy to use plugin interface that allows additional functionality
 to be added to the program by implementing a dynamically loadable library file.
@@ -58,7 +61,7 @@ structures and allows it to hook itself into specific areas to perform special a
 <li><a href="#Housekeeping">Housekeeping</a>
 <li><a href="#Main thread hook">Main thread hook</a>
 <li><a href="#Activity">Activity</a>
-<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 <li><a href="#Wakeup">Wakeup</a>
 <!--X1.5.1--></td></tr></table>
 <li><a href="#Setup parameters">Setup parameters</a>
@@ -82,7 +85,7 @@ structures and allows it to hook itself into specific areas to perform special a
 <li><a href="#Devices">Devices</a>
 <li><a href="#Audio">Audio</a>
 <li><a href="#Remote Control">Remote Control</a>
-<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#00AA00>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 <li><a href="#Conditional Access">Conditional Access</a>
 <!--X1.5.0--></td></tr></table>
 </ul>
@@ -681,7 +684,7 @@ be queried, and further prompts may show up. If all prompts have been confirmed,
 the shutdown will take place. As soon as one prompt is not confirmed, no
 further plugins will be queried and no shutdown will be done.
 
-<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.1--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 <a name="Wakeup"><hr><h2>Wakeup</h2>
 
 <center><i><b>Wake me up before you go-go</b></i></center><p>
@@ -970,6 +973,19 @@ written to the log file, indicating that a translation is missing.
 Texts are first searched for in the <i>Phrases</i> registered for this plugin (if any)
 and then in the global VDR texts. So a plugin can make use of texts defined by the
 core VDR code.
+<p>
+<!--X1.5.3--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+The system VDR is running on may use a character encoding where a single character
+(or <i>symbol</i>) consists of more than one byte (UTF-8, as opposed to, for instance,
+ISO8859-1, where every character is represented by a single byte in memory).
+In order to make sure a plugin works regardless of the character encoding the current
+system uses, the VDR core code provides several functions and macros that allow accessing
+text strings transparently without knowing whether this is a single or multi byte
+character set. The names of these functions and macros are all of the form <tt>Utf8...()</tt>,
+and are defined in <tt>VDR/tools.h</tt>.
+Most of the time a plugin doesn't need to care about this, but when it comes to
+handling individual characters these functions may come in handy.
+<!--X1.5.3--></td></tr></table>
 
 <a name="Custom services"><hr><h2>Custom services</h2>
 
@@ -1618,7 +1634,22 @@ Note that a plugin should always at first request a single drawing area
 with the full required resolution. Only if this fails shall it use alternate
 areas. Drawing areas are always rectangular and may not overlap (but do not need
 to be adjacent).
+<p>
+<!--X1.5.3--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#FF0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+Special consideration may have to be given to color usage if the OSD provides
+8bpp (256 colors). In that case, fonts may be drawn using <i>anti-aliasing</i>,
+which requires several blended color values between the foreground and background
+color. In order to not use up the whole color palette for a single color
+combination (and thus be unable to draw any other colors at all), it may be
+useful to call
+
+<p><table><tr><td bgcolor=#F0F0F0><pre>
+osd-&gt;SetAntiAliasGranularity();
+</pre></td></tr></table><p>
 
+which allows the system to evenly distribute the palette entries to the various
+color combinations (see <tt>VDR/osd.h</tt> for details).
+<!--X1.5.3--></td></tr></table>
 <p>
 Directly accessing the OSD is only allowed from the foreground thread, which
 restricts this to a <tt>cOsdObject</tt> returned from the plugin's <tt>MainMenuAction()</tt>
@@ -2087,7 +2118,7 @@ Put(uint64 Code, bool Repeat = false, bool Release = false);
 
 The other parameters have the same meaning as in the first version of this function.
 
-<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#AA0000>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
+<!--X1.5.0--><table width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=#00AA00>&nbsp;</td><td width=100%>
 <a name="Conditional Access"><hr><h2>Conditional Access</h2>
 
 <center><i><b>Members only!</b></i></center><p>