Re: Whither OpenType

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > You might find it interesting that the FreeType engine does Arabic
> > OpenType fonts quite well without using Uniscribe.  However, they
> > have their own shaping algorithm for Arabic.  I provided them with
> > a couple of Arabic OpenType fonts.  The rendering looks like the
> > output I got using Uniscribe...including the cursive attachment
> > feature. 8-)
> 
> Good, I suppose in this case the FreeType people are working
> backwards from fonts designed for Windows and building their shaping
> engine so that it gives the same results.  BTW it is nice to hear
> that someone from Microsoft is being helpful to people in the
> FreeType project.  Kind of dents the big bad propriety image of MS
> that some people have a bit.

Just to clarify a few things:

During the development of OpenType support in FreeType, I've *only*
used the OT specs.  Andrei Burago has helped me a lot to identify
fuzzy things in the specs, but I've neither seen the Uniscibe
interface nor the OTLS API.

After finishing the implementation, I asked Paul Nelson whether his
announced Arabic font is available for testing, and he was so kind in
sending it to me, together with some images and input files.
Surprisingly, only very minor fixes were necessary (caused by
misinterpretations of the OT specs) to get the same results.

Again, many kudos to Andrei and Paul!

As a conclusion, I have not worked backwards from the font to the
shaping engine (I don't have Windows installed at all :-) but instead
went the `official' but painful way in implementing the OT specs
directly.

In case you are interested, please download the current development
snapshot (which will be released in a few weeks as FreeType 1.4) from

  ftp://ftp.freetype.org/pub/devel/freetype-current.tar.gz

The test program which uses OT features is called `ftstrtto'.  Note
that FreeType (and the test programs) will compile under Windows also.

We'll soon implement OT support in FreeType 2, with an improved
interface (which is the weakest part of my implementation -- any
comments to improve it are highly welcome).


    Werner