Re: Mad idea

[abdulhaq <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk>]

I agree with you. I didn't fully explain the functionality of OpenType as (a) 
I am only familiar with Type 1 and ttf, not OpenType (good reason, eh) and -  
more to the point - (b) from what Thomas is saying, and he seems to me to be 
an expert, is that no current font technology offers exactly what arabic 
needs. What he is referring to is the need to lay out glyphs, dots and 
harakaat on consideration of the entire word and not just whatever 
glyphs/ligatures happen to be available in the combined font file/unicode 
encoding. Also, he mentions the need to actually change some features of a 
glyph depending on the context, for instance the length of the tooth of the 
baa' might be lengthened when next to a siin.

Having said that I really appreciate your thoughts and will investigate 
OpenType properly this weekend, inshaa'allaah.

I would like to get your opinion, as someone with a better understanding of 
font technology than myself,  on a couple of points:

1 - Do you think that OpenType cannot be improved upon for arabic? If it can, 
in what ways would you suggest?

2 - What is the best open source implementation of an OpenType engine, and 
how are its current abilities at the moment? Perhaps implementing this 
standard is the best way forward?

wasalaam
abdulhaq

On Friday 11 June 2004 21:09, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> It's simply not true that current rendering engines process a
> letter at a time.  You better have a look at OpenType technology.
> Not all of that is implemented in Windows or Pango, but they
> already do a bit of Nasta'liq with the implemented parts.

> >
> > I think you need to read Thomas's pdf(s). He argues that current arabic
> > rendering techniques on computers is fundamentally flawed because it
> > (simplifying greatly and generalising) renders one glyph at a time, and
> > also the nuqaaT/dots are built into the glyph rather than added after
> > rendering the word (sometimes leading to overlapping or confusing
> > nuqaaT).
> >
>