Re: [Render] OpenType support in Pango

[Mark Leisher <mleisher crl nmsu edu>]

    Brian> For most languages this is true but I thought that in some Arabic
    Brian> scrips the glyphs decended as the text moved to the left.

    Brian> While we would not want to do this for every language I'm curious
    Brian> what API we will provide to support this.

A good question.  On one hand, if you place the letters of a word using simple
arithmetic, the set of glyphs needed are much smaller, but each glyph has to
be drawn individually.

On the other hand, if you create separate glyphs for all the possible
positions one letter shape can take, you end up with a font like Monotype
Nastaliq - so large it takes 80+ TrueType fonts to hold all the glyphs.

Of course, a large part of the Monotype font set consists of ligatures in
different vertical positions.  For basic Urdu support, one might be able to
fit all the needed glyphs into one font.
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Mark Leisher
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