Re: [Render] OpenType support in Pango

[bstell netscape com (Brian Stell)]

Mark Leisher wrote:

>     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

Hum, I assumed that the vertical position depended on the number
of proceeding characters in the current word.  Does this explain the
following?

> , you end up with a font like Monotype
> Nastaliq - so large it takes 80+ TrueType fonts to hold all the glyphs.

Brian