[HarfBuzz] Who is integrating Pango's shapers into HarfBuzz?

[Andreas Vox]

Am 18.05.2007 um 17:51 schrieb Ed Trager:

> Hi, LingNing,
>
> My understanding is that Simon Hausmann of QT has already integrated
> the shapers from QT into HarfBuzz.

Yes, but he didnt use the ad-hoc headerfile we came up with in Boston.
So while it works for Qt4, it will need some work to bring it into  
shape for a public HB interface.

Currently there are HB native glyphbuffers, the new interface we came  
up with in Boston, and the buffer the Qt shaping code writes into.  
IMO we should first try to unify those structures (I have myself some  
requirements on that for Scribus).

The next thing to polish would be the input structures for font faces  
and shaping options and char attributes.. I think we already agreed  
pretty much on UTF-16 for the input text.

> I thought that there was some consensus that perhaps the QT Indic
> shapers were a bit more mature than those in Pango or something like
> that.  I think you'll need to ask Simon and Behdad about the decision
> making process, and they should be able to tell you more precisely
> where things currently stand.
>
> If shapers based on QT are already present, why would Pango shapers
> need to be ported ? -- unless certain script shapers are still missing
> ?
> I am personally quite curious to know which script shapers are still
> missing in HarfBuzz?  For example, what about:
>

Yes, we would need a comparison of language support for both shaping  
engines.
If there are languages or scripts which are handled better by current  
Pango code, those should be ported after the output buffer interface  
is fixed.
I also remember that ICU might have some code to synthesize OTF  
tables for handling arabic presentation forms.

/Andreas