From: Tavis Barr (tavis.barr@liu.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 19:57:23 EST
Hi Dom.
That would do it. :) Is AbiWord purposefully avoiding Pango? Is it so
that it renders the same way across platforms? Or is Pango support
planned?
Just curious,
Tavis
On Tue, 2003-02-11 at 19:44, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Hi Tavis,
>
> I think that Pango has its own shapers for Bengali and
> other Devanagari based scripts. Right now Abi has its
> own shaping engine that does not use Pango - we
> currently use XFT2 on Linux to draw the necessary
> text.
>
> I'm no i18n expert by any stretch of the imagination,
> but I *think* this is what's going in here.
>
> Cheers,
> Dom
>
> --- Tavis Barr <tavis.barr@liu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone.
> >
> > I just installed AbiWord 1.1.3 from the RPMs and I
> > have to say I'm very
> > impressed by the progress. Congratulations.
> >
> > I'm trying to get the Bengali input method to work
> > under gtk+. I use a
> > plugin called imbeng, available from:
> >
> >
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=43331
> >
> > I fire up AbiWord under and Indian Bengali locale
> > (LC_ALL=bn_IN.UTF-8
> > abiword-2.0 &) and change the font to a Bengali font
> > (Mukti in this case
> > but I don't think it matters).
> >
> > The Bengali input method is correctly chosen by
> > default (i.e., if I
> > right-click in the text entry area, it's selected
> > under "Input Methods")
> > and when I start typing, the appropriate Bengali
> > characters come out.
> > This already means that it's at least half-working,
> > because the imbeng
> > program is responsible for turning multiple
> > keystrokes into
> > multiple-keystroke characters.
> >
> > However, the characters don't glyph properly when I
> > display them. There
> > are two points here and I'll try to give some
> > background.
> >
> > Bengali (and other Devanagari-based scripts) work in
> > a system where each
> > syllable in a word is represented by a glyph for a
> > consonant (or a
> > single glyph for a string of consonants if they are
> > pronpounced
> > together, such as "str" or "pl") and an attached
> > glyph for the vowel
> > that follows that consonant. (Words that start with
> > a vowel get a
> > separate starting-vowel glyph.) Depending on the
> > vowel, sometimes the
> > vowel sign comes to the left of the consonant,
> > sometimes to the right.
> > For example, "e" and "i" come to the left of the
> > consonant in Bengali,
> > "a" to the right, "u" below, and "o" on both sides.
> >
> > So, for example, if I type the Bengali word "sneho"
> > (meaning
> > "affection"), I should expect to get a glyph for
> > "sn", and then the
> > glyph for "e" which in this case comes to the left
> > of the glyph for
> > "sn."
> >
> > Instead, I get the glyph for s followed by the glyph
> > for n, and the "i"
> > to the right of it all.
> >
> > One thing that makes me think that this is an issue
> > of rendering and not
> > input: Each of the consonants (s and n), when it is
> > displayed, is
> > followed by a special Bengali punctuation marker
> > underneath that sort of
> > means "don't treat the next character as a separate
> > syllable." So the
> > proper way to render appears to involve combining
> > consonants into one
> > glyph when they are followed by this marker.
> >
> > Currently, gedit 2.0 renders this input method
> > correctly.
> >
> > I also suspect that if this problem exists for
> > Bengali, it probably
> > exists for other Indian languages.
> >
> > I'm sorry I don't know more about the internals to
> > be able to suggest
> > precisely what's wrong. I hope this note is helpful
> > anyway in pointing
> > out a bug. For more information on rendering
> > Bengali, you might wish to
> > visit the Bengali Linux project at
> > www.bengalinux.org and talk to one of
> > the developers there, who may at least know how it
> > works on gedit (which
> > is their reference program).
> >
> > Although I'm not familiar with the programs, I can
> > and do code; let me
> > know if there is any way I can assist with this.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tavis
> >
>
>
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