Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 07:27:02PM -0700, Baiju M wrote:
> > - mozilla can be configured to use fonts such as
> > mangal/raghu/tunga
> 
> If do so, will it support GSUB? 

I'm not sure I understand the question - but mozilla in the above
configuration didn't support GSUB.

> (In a similar way of Yudit)

Yudit opens the font file directly and doesn't depend on the X server
for this functionality. I also tested yudit-2.6 with the above fonts and
they seem to work well, except for some minor flaws.

But the main issue is yudit is a "special purpose" app. Working on a
general purpose framework is a lot more important, because most app
developers are unlikely to spend a lot of time i18n'izing their apps.
Ultimately what we need may be a text editor widget that's Indic aware
(such as a KPart or the Gnome equivalent).

From what I can tell the Gnome and KDE camps are coming up with their
own APIs for dealing with this beast. Pango is primarily used in gnome
(although the author seems to suggest that it's more general) and Qt3
has an Arabic shaping engine built-in.

> http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/freetype/2002-June/002387.html
> 
> These GSUB and other advanced OTF table support is going to be
> solved by using FreeType Layout library, let us wait for some
> time.
> 
> http://www.freetype.org/ftlayout/index.html

I've been reading this page for close to a year now. I think the Indian
community has to take the initiative and push these features. Otherwise
these things may never happen.

	-Arun

PS: Found this on the net today - quite informative:

http://www.links.nectec.or.th/~thep/thaisupp/