Re: questions for a page layout program

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ariman ee>]

On Sat, 3 Jun 2000, Liam Quin wrote:

> > 2. Layout engine
> > Have you tried, to more exactly describe the process, getting
> > visible/printed output from unicode stream in you imagination.
> 
> I am not sure what you are asking here.  I don't have anything written
> down in more detail yet, sorry.

I simply would like to get more case studies, how people want the font
system to behave. Currently I have only sodipodi and gnome-print. But if
you one day will think in more details, I would be very glad to hear ;)

> [...]
> > Maybe the Right Way for future is:
> > - Use GnomeFont as universal abstract font object, binding together
> >   Pango/X/printer/canvas/whatever fonts
> Pango isn't finished though.  And I absolutely need to distinguish
> TT, Type 1 and bitmap (and other, e.g. Speedo) fonts in the Choose
> Font dialogue box, because otherwise people might try and send a
> bitmap, or a TrueType font, to a PostScript typesetter, not a good
> idea.  I *do* want to generate PostScript separations and have the
> typesetter's RIP do the font rendering, as that's the only sensible
> way to give the print bureau enough control for hexachrome, etc.

This unhappy situation with different font formats is one of reason, I
find gnome-font library needed.
- if font is only available as bitmap, it should be completely ignored by
  gnome-font
- if font is TrueType and PS printing is requested, library should either
-- look up, if Typex version of same font exists
-- if not, do TTF->Type1 conversion itself (AFAIK, it should be quite
   possible to get hinted Type1 from TTF, I do not know, how real is the
   opposite)
I know, you are concerned about font copyrights, so maybe some per-font
conversion restrictions can be implemented in library too. But in open
source app these can never be much obstacle...

> 
> > - Use (possibly derived) Pango layout engine, to generate glyph layout and
> >   to translate input back to text level
> Pango isn't finished though. :-)

Yes, Pango is not finished and gnome-font does not exist at all. If you
need working code fast, you can not wait for these. Working Pango should
be out quite soon, but at moment concerned only with X fonts, nothing
more. Writing additional engines, relies on glib 1.4 object system
implementation in Pango, which also is not yet completed ;(
But still I hope, we can share design ideas, so the systems would be
mostly compatible, and porting your app to pango and/or gnome-font would
be relatively little effort.

Best wishes,
Lauris