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

[Maggy Anastasia]

Hi Behdad,


At the moment I am trying to use HarfBuzz (and FreeType) to deal with these tables. The only reason for me to do so (at least at current moment) is to render Arabic font correctlly.

you mentioned that if the primary use is to get Arabic rendering, I can use FriBidi only to do so.
Does FriBidi2 needs advance typography tables (GPOS, GSUB, etc) as input? I looked at the interface of fribidi, it seems to me that freebidi output is independent from

 font files (ttf or otf) and  that the information regarding glyph substitution, joining, etc is already defined in a built in lookup table (please correct me if I am wrong).
If this is the case, if I want to render the arabic text using certain font, is it true that for glyph positioning, i would still need to use the information in GPOS table, thus requiring me to use 

HarfBuzz and FreeType?

I am so sorry if my question is too basic, I have no prior knowledge on Arabic typography. I am basically in need of enlightenment on when to use fribidi, 
harfbuzz and freetype and whether I should combine any of these in this situation.

best regards

Maggy Anastasia Suryanto



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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