Re: OpenType Layout?

[David Turner]

Hi Tor,

> 
> Hi,
> 
> What is the current status of the OpenType Layout stuff that was in
> freetype1? Has any further work been done on it, and might it be
> available for testing somewhere? I would like to try to use it in my
> FreeType2 renderer for Pango.
> 
As you probably imagine now, we won't port the OpenType Layout code
from FT 1.x to 2.0. Actually, we discussed the issue quite
extensively during our latest meeting, and we now want to provide
an independent text layout library based on OTL. By independent,
I mean that:

 - it will not directly depend on FreeType 2

 - it will use raw OTL tables (as well as CMaps)

 - we'll support vendor-specific or langage-specific
   glyph encodings by automatically generating the
   corresponding OTL tables, whenever possible

 - eventually, we'll modify some FT2 internals to
   let the font engine automatically generate OTL
   tables from certain font formats (e.g. a GPOS table
   to model the kerning tables of a TTF or a Type 1
   font), or even export raw CMaps..

We considered using Pango, but unfortunately its design clearly
does'nt meet our requirements (I've asked Owen specifically about
it), so we had to find another option. However, I have studied the
Pango code rather extensively now, and I think we'll provide code
that should be easily usable by this project too..

Who knows, maybe I'll even submit an engine for it ;-)

> Umm, now I notice that there is a mention about this in the
> ft2faq.html. Are those still correct, i.e. will something be announced
> in "a few weeks"?
> 
Now that the caching sub-system is in place. All I need is find a few
more bugs, and improve the auto-hinter significantly before making the
official "release" of FreeType 2.0. The new "FreeType Layout" project
will the be announced. Expect something around mid-september..

Hope this helps,

- David


> --tml