Re: [Silgraphite-devel] Re: Pango and SILGraphite was Re: Possible Pango 1.4 ideas

[Sharon_Correll sil org]

On 01/23/2003 01:08:10 PM Owen Taylor wrote:
>To state something that may be a bit controversial, my opinion is that
>the set of "hard" scripts out there is pretty finite, and not going to
>go up in the future. Rather than trying to make it possible to handle
>arbitrary new scripts, I think time would be better spent creating the
>necessary specifications, fonts, and code to fit the dozen or so
>remaining complex scripts into OpenType.


I'd like to clarify the purpose of Graphite. Yes, implementing scripts that
are currently unimplemented at the lowest level of whatever platform you're
working on is one of the uses. This is needed on Windows especially, since
the support provided at the OS level is not extensible by the average user.

But beyond that, there is also a need to extend or customize the behavior
of generally well-supported scripts to match the usage of specific language
communities. Here are a few specific examples:

* A specific language of Southeast Asia uses the Khmer script, which itself
does not have good support. But even if it did, this language has the need
to create extra consonants (formed by adding tick marks to the standard
base consonants). So to support this language, you either need to support
characters representing the tick marks in the Khmer script module, or
precompose a set of consonants and add them to the character repertoire.
(The latter approach has is what's required on Windows, but possibly the
former would work in Pango.)

* Arabic script has a lot of examples. Standard Arabic only has three
vowels, so to use Arabic script for language other than Arabic you often
have to add extra vowels. There are other languages that need to add extra
consonants, or add new diacritics to form new characters from the standard
consonants. Also there are communities that have a variant way of writing
certain diacritcs.

* There are numerous Southeast Asian languages where you need to be able to
support a wider variety of vowel combinations to handle the very large
number of vowels sounds in the language (larger than in the majority
language for which the script was developed). These combinations may not be
handled correctly if the script module was developed with only the majority
language in mind.

These are just a few examples of script variations that are needed for some
of the lesser-known languages of the world. Extending the behavior of a
font using specific smart-font technology seems a much more accessible way
to go than modifying software modules, especially for communities without a
lot of technological resources to begin with.