Re: Installing OpenType fonts

[Stefan Baums <baums u washington edu>]

Many thanks for your replies!

> If you have such a font, then you would (with pango-1.2 and fontconfig)
> simply copy it into ~/.fonts or /usr/share/fonts.

I definitely look forward to fontconfig support everywhere.

> Writing the module is done by looking at an existing modules
> and figuring out how it works... there aren't really any docs 
> currently, but half a dozen people have managed to write modules,
> so it's apparently possible to figure out. :-)

I downloaded the pango-1.2.0 sources and had a look at basic-xft.c and
indic-ot.c.  Alas, I am not a programmer (not even a little), so the
code remains unintelligible to me.  I am afraid I will have to wait
for the wizards to get it working, but will be more than happy to do
all the testing I can.

As a matter of interest: Apart from the OpenType Latin font that I
would like to use, I am also interested in the ancient Indian scripts
Kharosthi and Brahmi.  I co-authored the Unicode proposal for the
former (now accepted by the Unicode Consortium for inclusion in the
standard), and am working on a similar proposal for the latter.  Do
you think a Kharosthi OpenType font (to be developed) would work with
the Pango Indic OpenType module?  The Kharosthi script is

   - right to left
   - has vowel diacritics and combining forms just like Brahmi scripts
   - is encoded in the SMP

(If you are interested in the details, they are in the proposal:

   http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/downloads/Kharoshthi.pdf.)

All this is not idle curiosity.  We have a major research project here
at the University of Washington investigating the most ancient
Buddhist manuscripts, discovered in just the last few years:

   http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/

and need the script support for the lexicographic database and our
text editions.  Being able to use free software would be a great plus,
and good publicity for everybody.  (The technical side of the project
has had coverage on the Adobe website:

   http://www.adobe.com/print/features/scrolls/main.html

- now imagine an article like that on gtk.org :-))

Best regards,
Stefan

-- 
Stefan Baums
Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington