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
