- how well maintained is the win32 backend? Better or worse than ft2?
The ft2 backend is only as good as its weakest link, which in this case is clearly fontconfig. Fixing that up so it no longer has all these bugs would be a big task which would, as far as I know, only get used and tested by us and Dia.
The win32 backend is used by gdk-win32 for such things as widget rendering, so it should stay functional. Inkscape uses a broader set of functions than are needed by gdk but it should be OK.
- how much additional maintenance will be required to support the
win32 backend in inkscape?
Some. The files in question have changed about once every three months during the past year, all of them fairly minor bug fixes. The fact that this is my area should make it more likely that it stays up to date. Incidentally, Mental will blow his top when he sees how many #ifdefs are used, but I wanted to keep the two code paths next to each other as much as possible so that it's easy to change one when the other changes.
Richard.