Re: [Freetype] FreeType Rasterizer

[Antoine Leca]

Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > We are start-up developing a new device that will be shipped in many
> > different markets around the world.  We are in the process of
> > evaluating resources for displaying text on our screens.  We are
> > interested in utilizing the FreeType rasterizer but would need to
> > support languages outside of the Western European languages.  Do you
> > have any suggestions as to how we would go about acquiring or
> > licensing type to utilize with the FreeType rasterizer?
>>

AFAIK, there is no difference between using Freetype for, say,
Latin script, with regard to any other script. However, the auto-hinter
works much better with letters like those of Europe, including Greek
or Cyrillic, than with others scripts; CJK is reported to be quite
inferior in quality, for example.

Now, a point that Werner did not highlight is about the use of TrueType
fonts: if you plan to use them, you should choose between two options:
 - either discard the hints that are parts of the fonts, and stick with
the auto-hinter, which may be a problem, see above;
 - or using the byte code interpreter, and for this you need a license
from Apple, which own the rights and patents linked with the TrueType
technology (this is independant from Freetype).

> > In particular we would need one font for Western European languages,
> > Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese and
> > possibly Arabic and Indic.  Please let me know.
<snip>
> Recently a bunch of fonts for 8 Indic scripts (IIRC) have been
> announced on the Unicode email list; they are available from
>
>   http://www.akruti.com/freedom/
>
> Again, you have to map them to Unicode and have to do some extra work
> if you don't use ISCII.

Even if you plan to use ISCII, you will have quite an amount of work
to deal with Indic scripts, unless you store the text as glyphs (rather
than with the common way, i.e. characters). Indic scripts are an order
of complexity above others "usual" scripts in rendering; this is the
reason while few engines exist for them. Pango (inside Gnome) is an
example of a project that may lead in the near future to seemless
rendering of Indic scripts.


Antoine