Re: Mad idea

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- abdulhaq <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk> wrote:
> Reading the discussions about Unicode / Quran and then some of Thomas's
> very  interesting pdfs such as 
>   http://www.tradigital.de/specials/studies/iuc20c.pdf
> and hearing about his ACE arabic font technology gave me a mad idea which
> I'd love to start implementing.

Note that that doc was written in Jan 2002 (more on this later).  Having
read it a couple of time, I still don't quite understand it nor do I see
any details on how this is all done.  "OpenType needs internal tables for
contectual glyph substitution" seems like a loaded statement.  GSUBs et
al already exist, but I'm gathering that he wants to abstract the dots,
harakat and what not and that simply doesn't enter my mind (sorry for being
dense).

> Long-term Goal: provide a GPL general purpose font renderer along the lines 
> of xfs which would render arabic encoded strings (not just character glyphs) 
> -  in a 'beautiful' way.
>
[snip snip]
>
> Alternatively, maybe we could persuade Thomas to GPL (for the GPL
> platforms) his Arabic Calligraphy Engine ;-)

This idea and the technology that Thomas notes can be (and possibly is)
viewed as a major change to the status quo (its validity and/or superiority
not withstanding).  What concerns me (in relation to our Quran Missing
Character Proposal) discussed recently on the 'general' list is the 
unwillingness to fix what is there now (easily might I add) even for
the short term gain in lieu of a major overhaul.  I don't mean to bring
the 'general' thread here (I'm not doing that and please keep it on
'general'), I'm just voicing a concern which notes that such an effort
(ie. "Mad idea") might require a very long time to realize and it might
face stiff competition (did I say that was written in Jan 2002 :-) - so
keep that in mind.

I know very little on this topic but I do know that new/changed
technologies are an uphill battle in multiple fronts.  I'd guess
unicode would favor incremental changes as opposed to major
overhauls/shifts (just a thought).  And to be fully honest, I don't
quite understand how this is all to be done and whether we can expect
the font community to embrace such an effort (we have font problems
as is _today_ (ie. generating more fonts and more Arabic inclusion)
with well understood constructs no less).

Salam.

 - Nadim


	
		
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