For information on how this is handled on Mac OS, please see:
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/
Deborah Goldsmith
Manager, Fonts & Unicode
Apple Computer, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 11:03 AM, John Hudson wrote:
On Windows, the shaping engines for complex scripts are part of
Uniscribe (usp10.dll) and make use of OpenType font technology. An
Arabic OpenType font will contain layout features for Initial <init>,
Medial <medi> and Final <fini> substitutions (and possibly Isolated
<isol>, e.g. to handle contextual variation of the letter heh).
Uniscribe analyses strings of Arabic text, keeps track of the position
of letters and their neighbours, and implements the appropriate layout
feature for each letter.
For more information, see
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/opentype/default.htm,
and the MS Arabic font specification at
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/specs/default.htm