Re: Pango-1.7.0 released [unstable]

[Christopher Fynn <cfynn gmx net>]

Edward H. Trager wrote:

> Hi, Owen,

> The inclusion of Lao and Syriac is great!

> What about Khmer? I thought the KhmerOS people had said
> that the Khmer rendering module would be merged into 
> Pango 1.6, but I did not see it there.

> Also what about Burmese? Is anyone working on Burmese via
> OpenType, or does Burmese really require SIL's Graphite, and if
> so is anybody seriously working on SIL integration into Pango?

> Just curious. -Ed Trager

One problem is that it seems Microsoft have neither implemented any 
support for Myanmar/Burmese in Uniscribe nor published a script specific
spec for Myanmar/Burmese as they have for many other scripts:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/SpecificationsOverview.mspx>.

While, in absence of such an implementation or spec, one can go ahead 
and define a set of features appropriate for Myanmar/Burmese based on 
the features used for similar scripts and build fonts & support in Pango 
based on this set - there is no guarantee that this set of features will 
correspond to the set of features Microsoft eventually specify for 
Myanmar/Burmese. My fear is that this could lead to all sorts of 
incompatibilities between fonts and OpenType shaping engines
somewhere down the line.

In this respect AAT/ATSUI or SIL Graphite may be a better choice for 
building fonts and rendering support for scripts like Myanmar/Burmese 
right now since with these formats shaping rules can be built into the 
font itself and you don't have to rely on a specified set of script 
specific routines in the shaping engine.

- Chris