Re: [Devel] vertical substitution

[Antoine Leca]

Steve Hartwell wrote on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 11:10 PM:
> On Jan 13, 2004, at 10:36 AM, Antoine Leca wrote:
> > And in what are we (Freetype) involved?
> I'm suggesting that "we" are involved to the extent that at least some
> of us are interested in whether freetype2 can be used with
> pango/icu/stsf and other projects which can do what David Vincent was
> asking about (meaning "in practice", not in theory :-)

OK, I got your point.

> > This looks like an ICU issue to me.
> Well I'm more interested in what it looks like to the freetype2
> developers who have made some considerable effort to make freetype2
> work with any of the available layout engines.  From what I've been
> able to determine from the [Devel] archives and browsing the otlayout/
> sources, the interest is far from zero.

Correct.
However, both David, Werner, and I (at least) are browsing the various
forums involved, and reading (although, speaking at least for myself,
probably not with the due attention) the relevant email lists. Problem is,
we do not have all the time we want to involve us any better inside this
(again, I speak mainly for myself, but I would be surprised if David says
the contrary ;-)).

> If there were roadblocks or other issues which have prevented them from
continuing, perhaps I could help out.

Noted.

> > I am sure that if it is not already done
> That's what I was hoping to discover.
>
> > ... Eric will *love* to have someone helping him supporting his code!
> > ;-)
> I don't understand what you mean by this.

Well, I would say that:
 1) you should investigate the current state of ICU and Pango to clear out
what is the current state (unless someone can give a single point stating
the progress of this stuff).
 2) last time I looked after it, ICU stuff for layout was really Eric's
baby, and he was really asking for help since I understand he feeled a bit
alone with the project. Of course there are contributors, but it looks like
this is mainly Eric alone who maintain it. By the way, I had a quick look at
present ICU, and it looks like LayoutEngine did not considerably evolve from
the point it were about 1,5 year ago.

Don't misunderstand me: I believe this is a pity. However, I cannot help
Eric as much as I would like to do it. Furthermore, I do not like very much
the rest of ICU, I find it bloated for my taste and understanding of what
should be Unicode support. LayoutEngine is fine, however. You can grasp the
way it works in an instant, and dwell into it pretty easily.

> I don't support individuals working on open source projects,
> I contribute to the project itself if I am able.

I am not sure I understand you.
My point is that the Freetype team did reach the conclusion that it does not
have the resources (time, mainly) to extend the library to do layout. This
was originally forecasted (vestiges from these ideas are lying here and
there, like mlib), but currently there is no work done on it. Yes, I can
agree this is unfortunate. But we all have lifes, and now wifes, and now
babies. This really break plans for extension.
A pity, I would say.


Antoine