[Fribidi-discuss] fribidi & arabic shaping

[Nadim Shaikli]

On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 18:54:45 +0100
  "Chahine M. Hamila" <mch chaham com> wrote:
>
> > > The FriBidi library should be restricted to BiDi text ordering.
> > > Another library may be defined for text ordering and shaping in
> > > Arabic (and other languages, which need this), and it will define
> > > an environment data structure, which will include FriBidiEnv as
> > > a member.
> >
> > I disagree wholeheartedly - the inclusion of Arabic is a logical next
> > step.
>
> Yes it is, but not in Fribidi. Bidi ordering and Glyph shaping can be viewed
> as two different layers of treatment. Besides, adding shaping to fribidi is
> reinventing the wheel as Pango which relies (relied?) on Fribidi already
> does it

I agree with you on that bidi and shaping are two different treatments,
but having the simple "option" of combining them into the same library
(again optionally upon configure time) should be considered.  The option
noted is the difference between being able to include a rather light-weight
simple feature instead of the inclusion of something that is much heavier
and much more complete (with various other external dependencies).  This
by no means is meant to side-line Pango and/or any other implementation;
simply put, it would be ideal to have this option and it would do ALOT
more good than not having it.

> > The other argument that could be put forth is that fribidi's inclusion is
> > difficult enough in most applications (try convincing a application author
> > of its inclusion and he/she will go into a rant about it only catering to
> > a very small minority of users and not worth the headache).  To have those
> > authors also consider a second library would create more problems than it
> > would solve when it comes to getting it adopted.
>
> Inclusion of pango in such cases would include in the same step fribidi.
> In any case, inclusion of two libraries amounts pretty much to inclusion
> of one, so if any author is open to inclusion of an additional library
> it wouldn't be a problem whether you are in fact talking about fribidi,
> pango or both. The linking process only requires indicating which
> libraries you're using, and there's no mention of libraries at the code
> level.

Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience (in multiple cases) - for
further details let's take it off-line.

 - Nadim


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