Lukas Pietsch wrote:
> a lot was said in this thread about intelligent rendering
> mechanisms, [...]
> I figure that people are mostly thinking of the technology
> called "Open Type", is that right?
Right, but quite partial. There are several major technologies for rendering
"complex Unicode scripts".
Here are some of the principal ones:
- Open Type itself (see in http:/www.microsoft.com).
The "font-specific intelligence" is in the font itself; the "generic script
intelligence" is in a software component called UniScribe.
- AAT/ATSUI (see in http:/www.apple.com).
Most of the "intelligence" is in the font itself, which also includes a
state machine to operate substitution. The behavior of the smart fonts may
be influenced by external user settings.
- Graphite --my favorite, so far-- (see in http:/www.sil.org).
Takes a "stupid" TrueType font and merges it with the "intelligence" written
in an ad-hoc description language (GDL), to produce an "intelligent" font
quite similar to AAT/ATSUI. The accent is on extendability and, specially,
in supporting the Private User Area (which is a precious resource for
linguistic research and defining new orthographies).
- Omega (http://omega-system.sourceforge.net).
Built on top of the old and glorious TeX typesetting system. It may becaome
(or already is?) the standard for Unicode in Linux.
- More...
Other projects are ongoing, with a variety of approaches, philosophies,
scopes, applications.
OTH
_ Marco
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