encumbrances update

[Phil Race]

I just want to give a quick update on the state of one the 2D encumbrances
to a broader audience than the 2D and font mailing lists, since the
state of encumbrances are generally of broad interest.

Igor Nekrestyanov just put back into what will be b17 the first version of the
code that replaces using the T2K font rasteriser with freetype.
This should be be out on openjdk.java.net in a few days.

It is believed to build and work on all platform combinations : windows,
linux, solaris, 32 and 64 bit, but testing has focused on the 32 bit
versions.

Whilst removing the encumbrance, it does add the requirement
that you have freetype around. That is, at this time, we
chose not to include sources for a specific freetype since
we think most distros will want to link against the platform one.

If the build detects a compatible freetype in /usr/lib it will
just link against that.

But if needed you can provide your own by setting ALT_FREETYPE_LIB_PATH,
in which case ALT_FREETYPE_HEADERS_PATH should also be set.
The build docs have been updated with this information.

We have only tested against recent freetypes : 2.3.0 and later.
So there's some work to do there to see what the actual minimum
requirements are. If you have an earlier version you want to
try, you may need to bypass the sanity check.

Please try it out, and let us know of any suggestions for
improvement etc by communicating on
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/font-scaler-dev

And on a related note, Alexey Menkov is making changes which
separate out the encumbered Java Sound code from the unemcumbered parts.
This basically slims down the binary plug to just those parts that
need to be in it, making it easier to replace. Hopefully that
will be in an openjdk drop in about two weeks. I expect Alexey
have more to say on this on the sound mailing lists :
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/audio-engine-dev
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/sound-dev/

-Phil.