On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 02:34 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Mon, 28 May 2007 13:48:20 +0800 > LingNing Zhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Hi all, > >I have a question about freetype and harfbuzz. > >FreeType1 includes an extension to support OpenType text layout > >processing. But this support hasn't become part of FreeType2. Why? > >Why does FreeType2 not use the codes of harfbuzz to support OpenType > >text layout processing? > >Thanks! > > # Personally, I'm one of the people who want FT2 to have > # support for text layout feature. I guess I feel sympathy > # with you. But we are minority among FT2 developers :-). > > Excuse me, HarfBuzz developers want FT2 to include > built-in OT table parsers? Or, there is non-ICU/ > non-HarfBuzz/non-M17NLib/non-Pango/non-Qt library > their developers want FT2 to have OT table parser > and don't want to copy such from existing libraries?
No, no HarfBuzz developer wants that. The future is clear: HarfBuzz is the Linux OpenType Layout engine that Pango, Qt, and ICU will use. I'm currently in the process of (slowly) rewriting it to use mmap()ed font files instead of reading tables into memory. When I'm done with that, I'll revise the API and freeze it. There is further work to make HarfBuzz *the* shaper API for Linux systems. That is, again, Pango, Qt, ICU, Scribus, OO.o, etc all will be using HarfBuzz. This has been discussed extensively at the Text Layout Summit in Boston, and discussion is going on on the harfbuzz list and will be at the next Text Layout Summit at aKademy in a few weeks. This all probably takes a year or two to stabilize and released as a shared library, but what is two years anyway... On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 02:42 -0400, Werner LEMBERG wrote: > Perhaps a misunderstanding: I don't object to make FreeType handle > OpenType tables (see the validating stuff which we have developed > together). However, I object to let FreeType interpret them -- this > is really the job of a higher-level library. For the record, I think the ftvalid stuff is misplaced and doesn't belong in FreeType. Some of my concerns are similar to what David already raised. In short, I believe that any OpenType Layout engine should do its own validation, and has enough code to be able to do a validator very easily, and if mere font validation is desired, things like ttx already do it. I don't see where ftvalid is expected to be used. (that said, given that it's already in freetype, I don't mind it staying there.) Regards, -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 _______________________________________________ Freetype-devel mailing list Freetype-devel@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
