Open source development methologies have been used successfully for many different types of software, and are just as applicable to the task of rendering internationalized text. In particular, in the area of text rendering, an open- source approach provides the opportunity for local organizations and governments to actively contribute to development of support for scripts with smaller user communities, rather than simply waiting for for the software vendor to provide such support. The Pango project provides a highly modular framework for internationalized text layout and rendering, with the ability to incrementally add support for both new scripts for new new font technologies and rendering systems. Topics covered include the design of Pango and how that design has enabled contributions from the open-source community, current status and the use of Pango in the GNOME desktop, and the relationship of Pango to the larger roadmap for open-source font handling and text rendering.

The talk will be of interest to programmers and system designers considering using or contributing to Pango, and to those who simply want to get a better understanding of the inner-workings of open-source development. The level will be intermediate, and the talk will go into technical details of how Pango works, but little prior knowledge other than a basic understanding of Unicode terminology and concepts will be required.