On Mon, 2004-04-05 at 14:26, Eric Mader wrote: > I'm the original author of the current Pango Indic code. I made a single > module because much of the functionality for each script was the same, > and I wanted to avoid all of the problems associated with duplicate code. > > Having worked with this code now for about five years, I've found that > the approach I took makes it too fragile - it's too easy for the fix to > one script to break other scripts. I now believe that the functionality > should be split apart to avoid this problem. I think there may still be > a way to do this that minimizes code duplication, but I haven't yet > taken the time to look at this in detail. > > The code I contributed to Pango is based on the ICU LayoutEngine code. I > am currently scheduled to make this change to the ICU code for release > 3.2, which will be finished at the end of this year. My 3.2 schedule > won't be firm until after ICU 3.0 is released, which is currently > shceduled for mid-June of this year. I'd certainly support this change; it's been quite hard for me to make bug fixes to the Indic code in the current form, because while I can trust that a bug reporter will be proposing a change that makes his script render better, it's quite likely that it will cause a regression elsewhere. Other than splitting things up, the other thing that could really help here would be a set of automated or even semi-automated test cases. (By semi-automated, I mean someone would have to look at the result and compare to stored bitmap images.) In terms of the Tamil engine; there was an old separate module that predated the Indic code in there now. When we added the unified Indic code, we discussed things with the authors of the Tamil module, and they agreed that the new code base was a better way of doing Tamil. Regards, Owen
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