Re: [ft-devel] Open Type Font Support on Mobile Devices?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi,

For OpenType complex shaping you need HarfBuzz [1].  Google engineers are 
working on using it for the Chromium port on Linux [2].  Using Pango with the 
FreeType backend is a simpler solution (Pango+FreeType uses HarfBuzz internally).

If your primary use is to get Arabic rendering done, you can get away with 
using FriBidi2 [3] only.

behdad

[1] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz
[2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/harfbuzz/2009-March/000312.html
[3] http://fribidi.freedesktop.org/


On 04/09/2009 05:19 AM, Waqar Ahmad wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there anybody who has been working on font related stuff on mobile
> devices? I am interested in getting Open Type Font (OTF) support on
> symbian, windows mobile devices and most likely on Android in future
> as well. As far as I know, Open Type Fonts (Arabic, Urdu etc.) are not
> supported on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. FreeType does not
> support GSUB and GPOS.
>
> I am thinking about porting an existing open source OTF solution to
> mobile devices. A few possibilities that come in my mind are mentioned
> below and suggestions from members of this list are solicited.
>
> -Is there any good port of FreeType for Symbian and Windows Mobile
> available in open source? If it is there, I can try to further extend
> it to add required support for OTF.
>
> -If somebody has experience of working with Pango and consider it good
> for porting to mobile devices, this can be another option to explore.
>
> -Google Adroid is using FreeType, however, I don't know if they have
> added any support for OTF. One way could be to take FreeType from
> Android (assuming it would have been optimized for constrained mobile
> devices) and add support for OTF.
>
> I would highly appreciate suggestions and guidelines from this list on
> above matters.
>
> Best Regards,
> Waqar
>
>
>
> However, I am not sure if Open Type Font are completely supported or
> not in FreeType library.
>
> Specifically, I am interested in Urdu and Arabic languages support
> which require a number of rules for appropriate text rendering like
> glyph positioning and substitution. I want to know if such features
> are supported in FreeType library? If not, is there any other project
> in your knowledge that is working on something similar to what I am
> interested in?
>
> I will highly appreciate your guidance in this regard.
>
>
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