From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 21 2002 - 23:07:47 EDT
--- Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com> wrote:
> At 3:17 AM +0100 4/22/02, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> >Pango is cross-platform
>
> Well, for those platforms for which the entirety of
> glib2 has
> been ported - which as far as I know is....Linux,
> Linux and Linux.
I was lead to believe it was a lot more portable than
that but maybe I'm wrong ):
> >and is an abstraction that will use
> >Uniscribe on Windows and ATSUI on Mac as well as
> >FreeType on *nix.
>
> Not as I understand it. It will simply use FT2 -
> it does NOT
> try to sit on top of UniScribe or ATSUI...nor why
> should it since
> most of that logic is higher up in Pango.
Really? I think this is the comment from Havoc
Pennington which gave me the impression I have:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-office-list/2000-November/msg00115.html
> >Pango provides similar functionality to MS's
> Uniscribe. FreeType
> >only provides the functionality that you get from
> OpenType/TrueType
> >on
> >Windows/Mac.
>
> Correct.
>
>
> >You won't get proper
> >rendering of Thai or Indian languages with FreeType
> >alone.
>
> True, you'd need to add the appropriate glyph
> shapers,
> contextual handlers, etc. Tomas has already done a
> nice job of that
> with Hebrew and Arabic, and if/when we get users who
> are itching for
> Thai and Indian, we can add shapers for those too.
Hebrew is very easy. It only has 4 final forms. I'm
not sure if we support Hebrew vowel points because
that is harder. Arabic is a lot more comples but
nowhere near as complex as Indian scripts and Thai
is probably somewhere in between.
I've been trying to get Thai and Indian developers
interested for ages but the always start off
enthusiastic then get disheartened and leave ):
> >Do a Google search
> >for Uniscribe or ATSUI to see what they provide
> that
> >we will need sooner or later.
>
> I am quite familiar with both, thanks ;). I know a
> number of
> folks on both development/engineering teams...
Wow cool. Too bad they're not hacking AbiWord! (:
> >I think the major argument we had against Pango was
> >that it requires glib
>
> Right!
>
>
> >The Gnome guys don't
> >see this as a problem since glib is cross-platform.
> >
>
> See comment about glib and XP ;).
At Guadec there was a guy (forget his name) from
Compaq/HP/whoever they are now who did a presentation
on "Drainng the Swamp" - basically getting rid of
redundant development to make Linux more viable. One
of his points was breaking up big libraries into
smaller pieces that provided only the necessary bits
to do a certain task. The Gnome guys were very well
represented at this presentation and very interested.
If Glib2 is a burden for us but does contain stuff
that is essential for Pango, I am in favour of
hassling them to get it split out - or splitting it
out ourselves - I even have a feeling that somebody
else has already done this... It's gotta be easier
than reinventing the Pango wheel doesn't it?
By the way, I emailed Owen Taylor a bit earlier and
invited him to join this discussion.
Andrew Dunbar.
> LDR
> --
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Leonard Rosenthol
> <mailto:leonardr@lazerware.com>
>
<http://www.lazerware.com>
=====
http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net http://www.abisource.com
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun Apr 21 2002 - 23:08:53 EDT