Re: [ft-devel] Autohinting Indic text and the default script module used by FreeType2

[Rahul Bhalerao]

Hello David,

Thanks for accepting my suggestions. 
Although the screenshots attached were only for hindi, with my observations of other indic scripts,  hinting is improved for other scripts as well that do not have hanging baseline. To concentrate more on other features, IMO it would be good to have a separate module for Indic. If that is possible, please let me know when and where to submit the module and corresponding patches for the same.

Thanks,
- Rahul Bhalerao

2007/5/28, David Turner <address@hidden>:

Hello Rahul,

thanks a lot for pointing this out so clearly. I just switched the default
hinting script to CJK in the CVS repository. this should be part of the next
release, which should hopefully be available soon..

thanks again,

- David Turner
- The FreeType Project  (www.freetype.org)

On Mon, 28 May 2007 17:41:15 +0530, "Rahul Bhalerao" < address@hidden> said:
> Hi all,
>
> I have been trying to device a module for Indic hinting in FT2.
> The current default script module used by FT2 is latin which is not
> suitable
> for indic text and affects the display significantly.
> I found out that CJK module is much suitable for Indic text and it
> renders
> quality display even at small sizes. Thus I created another module for
> Indic
> based on CJK and following are my findings:
> 1. CJK algorithm is suitable for Indic shapes
> 2. Indic text consists of major amount of ligatures(GSUB combinations of
> unicode chars)
> 3. FT2 is unable to determine script for ligature glyphs (since they
> don't
> have unicode assigned), thus uses default latin module for hinting
> ligature
> glyphs and affects the display.
> 4. Above problem can be solved by changing the default fallback script to
> either CJK or Indic.
> 5. Since CJK/Indic scripts cover vast variety of shapes, they seem more
> suitable to be used as default modules for unidentified scripts.
>
> To illustrate the above findings, attached is the screenshot showing
> three
> different cases of hinted Indic text:
>
> 1. hinted indic text using latin module since default script is latin
> 2. hinted indic text using cjk based indic module and default script as
> latin
> 3. hinted indic text using cjk based indic module and default script as
> cjk/indic
>
> I seek advices from FT2 developers on this issue of changing the default
> script and including Indic modules.
>
> Thanks,
> Rahul Bhalerao