Re: [gtk-i18n-list] OpenType and font-variant support

[mpsuzuki hiroshima-u ac jp]

Hi,

Oops, before finishing my reply to your original post,
the 2nd post is arrived.

On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:17:51 -0400
"Steven Robertson" <nihilismwow gmail com> wrote:
>It appears that support for the variant property in Pango has not yet
>been implemented.  At this time, the only thing variant is supposed to
>do is enable small-caps.  However, after looking into getting more
>advanced support for the OpenType features for Latin alphabets, I
>believe that the variant property should be extended to enable access
>to the OpenType features which have not yet previously been available.
> These features include the aforementioned small capitals, swash
>capitals, selecting proportional/tabular lining/old-style figures,
>fractions, and so on.

Your proposal is interesting. In CJK typographic field, many
glyphic variation tags are registered in OpenType spec, and
some people want to use them on open source softwares.

At present, it seems that Pango (and its derivative HarfBuzz)
is interested in the implementation to support various language
and scripts, but I'm not sure if the heads of the projects
are interested in the inclusion of advanced typographic/
calligraphic features based on OpenType. Some people may insist
that the essential features to render Unicode string and the
non-essential features should be implemented in separated
libraries.

Especially, if we can access OpenType layout tables directly
and our interest is only the substitution of a glyph to another,
the proof of idea may not be so far. But, the collaboration
of non-freetype backends (e.g. Win32 or MacOS CoreGraphics)
may be slightly difficult.

Today I don't have sufficient to time to discuss in detail,
I will post next message after 2008-July-03. I wish other
people keep the discussion.

Regards,
mpsuzuki