[dot] Akademy 2007: Text Layout Summit

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1186422013/

From: Jonathan Riddell <>
Dept: scripty
Date: Monday 06/Aug/2007, @10:40

Akademy 2007: Text Layout Summit
================================

   Akademy 2007 hosted two mini-summits, one for Schools and Education
[http://dot.kde.org/1183817727/] and one for Text Layout.  The Text
Layout Summit [http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/TextLayout2007] was a
true cross platform event, and followed from the one last year at the
Gnome Summit.  Text layout is a complex area requiring advanced
knowledge of dozens of different writing methods.  With funding from The
Linux Foundation they brought together people from Pango, Qt, IBM ICU
(Intl. Components for Unicode), SIL Graphite, Unifont.org, m17n, W3C and
DejaVu.  Getting the various widget sets to have the same high quality
support for all scripts is a problem the summit hoped to solve. Read on
for details of what they discussed.
    Busy in the Summit
     Much of the current work for standardising text layout in the free
software world is going on in the HarfBuzz
[http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz] project, a joint
effort with code from Qt and Pango.

     Organiser  Ed Trager said of what had been discussed "A number of
brief updates and discussions were given (as outlined on the summit
wrapup page) [http://unifont.org/TextLayout2007/], but the major focus
of discussion was on insuring that the HarfBuzz architecture and API
will comfortably support the needs that SIL Graphite presents.  The Open
Source SIL Graphite engine is at the current time, from a features
perspective, the most advanced Text Layout Engine available anywhere and
was designed to support minority scripts as well as major complex world
scripts like Burmese and Khmer.  Scripts not yet in Unicode are also
supported.  There is an informed belief, especially from the Graphite
community of course, that only a few key architectural features will
need to be added or provided in HarfBuzz in order to support SIL
Graphite integration.  (A similar feature set may be required for
Apple's AAT technology support, and Lars Knoll of Trolltech has already
stated that he intends for HarfBuzz to have AAT support)."

     "Behdad Esfahbod (Redhat, Pango) and Simon Hausmann (Trolltech, Qt)
provided verbal agreement at the meeting that they would, together with
the SIL Graphite folks (Tim Eves and Sharon Correll, inter alia),
provide the foundational infrastructure needed to support SIL Graphite
in HarfBuzz. Eric Mader will also be looking to port his synthetic
Arabic GSUB table support for non-OpenType fonts from ICU into
HarfBuzz."

     Other talks included Arne Gotje talking about CJK support
[http://unifont.org/TextLayout2007/presentations/ArneGotjeCJKUnifontsProjectOutlookJuneJuly2007.pdf],
the revival of openfontlibrary.org [http://www.openfontlibrary.org] a
website to catalogue freely licenced fonts and Fontima
[http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/interview/fontima.php], a library
that can be used to make font selection widgets a better experience than
just seeing one big list.  Sharon Correll presented Graphite
[http://www.unifont.org/TextLayout2007/presentations/SharonCorrellSILGraphiteNotes.pdf]
which aims to support many minority languages.

     Promising as these developments are, there are still unsolved
problems in the world of text layout, including the Pan-Unicode issue. 
Should one font include every character, or should we fix our tools to
make it easier to load characters from different fonts?  The issues were
described in The Pan-Unicode Fonts talk
[http://unifont.org/TextLayout2007/presentations/BenLaenenPanUnicodeFontsDiscussion.pdf]
by Ben Laenen of DejaVu Fonts.
   Relaxing in Glasgow
     Behdad Esfahbod of Pango said that "the true value of all this
meetings and harfbuzz is the sharing of OpenType engine and shapers
between Pango, Qt, m17n and eventually ICU".  New work on HarfBuzz and
Graphite appears to be continuing at a good pace and although we don't
know when it will all be completed, cross platform text layout bliss
does seem a genuine prospect in the not too distant future.  Many thanks
to Daniel Glassey and Ed Trager for organising the summit.  There are
some photos of the meeting
[http://jasmine.19inch.net/~jr/away/2007-07-akademy-text-layout-summit-glasgow/]
and you can get the presentation slides and an audio recording
[http://www.unifont.org/TextLayout2007/] of the summit, with video still
to come.