From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Apr 24 2002 - 19:01:46 EDT
<snip>
> > Windows.
> > >
> > > This means Xft on X too, right?
> >
> > No, FreeType is independent of any system font
> > mechanism; it
> > parses the font files and gives you the glyphs as
> > bitmaps.
>
> If we want to support antialiased fonts, where will
> that support come from on Linux/Unix?
>
gtk 2.0 does this for us automatically.
> > > Can you give us some concrete, technical examples?
> > > Please CC the GTK I18N list too so we can get
> > comments
> > > straight from the Pango guys.
> > No, I cannot :). But as far as I understand, Pango
> > is a fairly high
> > level formatter, it does something like our
> > fl_BlockLayout class,
> > and we would have to replace the blockLayout with it
>
> We can't do that. Are you sure Pango doesn't support
> multiple levels? I'm pretty sure Uniscribe does and
> I hear Pango is quite analagous to Uniscribe.
I believe that pango will break a text run to fit in a horizontal
container.
It seems to me we want pange will to 4 things.
1. Draw a run at a certain location of a graphics class.
2. Measure the width of a run (string of text).
3. Measure the height of a run.
4. If needed tell us is a string of text can be broken at a certain point.
Is this possible?
MAybe we should look at replace parts of fb_LineBreaker with calls to
pango? This would interfere with my grand plans for a new layout engine.
>
> > _to_get_most_out_of_it_. This basically means
> > throwing our entire
> > existing layout engine out and start again. It could
> > well be the best
> > thing to do right now, but I am not fully convinced.
>
> I don't believe Pango can do the layout stuff we need
> to do but I'm in favour of throwing out our entire
> existing layout engine if that's the way to get the
> best product.
>
OK I'll try to find time to thoruoghly investigate the pango api. I was
hoping to leave to you guys!
My *feeling* is that we can use bits to replace methods in our current
layout and graphics classes.
> > > I'm under the impression that using Pango will
> > make
> > > exotic languages "just work" in places such as
> > > dialogs and widgets too. We might handle the
> > rendering
> > > nicely on screen but can we handle it in say the
> > > spellchecker window or in window title bars?
> > I am not sure that is the case; what we can do with
> > the widgets
> > depends on what the widgets can do, and that varies
> > from OS to
> > OS. But this is a real issue we will have to address
> > as well.
>
>
> > > Again please tell us what Pango is missing for us
> > specifically.
> > I am not saying Pango is missing anything, I am
> > merely not sure
> > that the folk who advocate using Pango have strayed
> > past the
> > Pango home page. It is about time that someone
> > undertook as
> > serious feasibility study of using Pango.
>
> Yes I said as much some time ago. I wish I had the
> equipment to do it myself. I don't find the Pango
> home page very helpful and I have no way to get into
> the Pango code at this stage ):
>
> > > Surely we would use Pango only for rendering the
> > > straight "runs" of text. All formatting including
> > > tabs we would do ourselves.
> > If that is all we want to use Pango for, then we
> > have to migrate to
> > freetype first, because we will be left to do the
> > screen drawing
> > using glyph indices, and we do not want to do this
>
> Surely we would do this with Pango too?
>
I agree.
> > writing a fairly large amount of code."
>
> We shouldn't be scared of that. It sounds like a
> good thing. And doing it without Pango would involve
> a much larger amount of code IMHO.
>
I agree.
> > > Surely if pango can give us a shape
> > > to print on the screen it can give us one to print
> > on
> > > a printer - but I don't know printers alas...
> > Pango, if used in the way you envisage, only gives
> > us a glyph
> > indices, but even if it gave us actual shapes, this
> > would be of no
> > use for generating PostScrip. In the Unix World the
> > fact we can
> > draw it on screen does not mean we can print it via
> > PostScript,
> > because we could well be using non-PostScript fonts
> > on the
> > screen. Again, I am not saying there is a problem,
> > merely that this
> > issue has to be looked into, for being able to
> > support a myriad of
> > languages on screen is not enough in itself.
>
> Since the new Gnome has Pango built in and used
> everywhere, how does gnomeprint cope in the new Gnome?
>
I agree again. I don't know if printing has been thought all the way
through. Someone remarked that pango next generation would have a printing
component.
> > Just for the record, I am _not_ objecting to us
> > using Pango, neither
> > for low-level shaping, nor for high level layout. I
> > am objecting to
> > deciding to use Pango without thinking seriously
> > through what would be involved, what it would bring
>
> I agree 100% - that's why this discussion now. We
> need to thrash out all that we think we need, all that
> we think Pango can do, all that using some alternative
> would mean, etc. So far it's been very enlightening.
>
> > us, and *WHO WILL DO THE CODING*. The bidi
> > experience taught me that not that many
> > people will do the coding when it comes to
> > more "exotic" internationalization.
>
> I've always been very keen to work on it. I just
> happened to be on a world trip during most of the
> work you did. Now I just need an income or at least
> a computer and internet access and I'm itching to
> tackle it!
>
This is great! I'm willing to live with fixing assumptions about one
docposition one character one letter if you guys promise to follow through
on full international support. Otherwise we might as well stick to our
current internationalization.
>
> Trying to get better rendering and
> internationalization
> will require just that no matter whether we use Pango
> or not. But we should keep talking so everybody knows
> how much of a commitment it would mean. Maybe at the
> end of the day they will decide it's too ambitious
> and just do the tables etc for 1.2 and leave this till
> later. At least it they will make that decision with
> the best information available.
I'm beginning to understand that. I'm very happy you guys are talking
about that.
Cheers
MArtin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Apr 24 2002 - 19:14:19 EDT