[Raion]

Hey x68000,

You have stumbled onto a problem that has been discussed many times before. The issue is with the modern software, not IRIX. GTK2 and up has several issues that make it difficult to use on IRIX:

1. GTK2 and up uses harfbuzz to shape opentype fonts including anti aliasing. Harfbuzz is a C++11/14 project in the versions I've tried to port to IRIX. It appears from my personal understanding of the issue to be the primary hang-up: it has few alternatives, one of which is Rust (aka not viable) and it doesn't use OpenGL for rendering text, so it resorts instead to slow CPU based cycles which are made even slower by a lack of MIPS specific optimizations.

2. GTK2 assumes a 32-bit color X. IRIX uses an 8, 16 or 24-bit color X. This can cause colors to break.

3. GTK2 moved away from using XFT and major X protocols to using XRender to directly render text. This makes it hard to optimize stuff. Either it barely runs satisfactory on even a Tezro, or it looks like ass.

The problem with GTK1 is that it didn't shape text at all, making things "ugly". You'll also notice motif doesn't really make attempts to use modern fonts either.

So how do we fix it? Well, the easiest way would be to build a word processor from scratch. We have a potential thing for this, but my developer in question is currently dealing with a divorce and thus cannot receive payment. I thus told him to not work on it. But we had a paint program we were working on first and foremost so when he's back, that gets priority one.

Barring that, we could up-port the old XFT rendering from pango and other GTK2 components forward. This is not impossible, but it's not straightforward either.

There might be other ways forward, user nuclear or others here may have better ideas. I will admit that I only know this on a high level and thus I don't feel like I can propose every specific avenue possible.

I will request that we refrain from comment on SGUG related stuff. They have not been particularly charitable or kind in recent months towards me so I have no interest in giving them my energy or words.