[HarfBuzz] New Indic standard?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 08/19/2009 02:28 AM, Gora Mohanty wrote:
>
> What does such a test suite involve? In the past, we have prepared
> a list of base characters, plus allowed conjuncts (along with
> example words) for some Indic languages in ICU. Along with these,
> we have prepared screenshots of the expected rendering, which can
> be compared to Harfbuzz rendering. Does that suffice?

That's a good start, though what I want instead is a comprehensive of 
sequences relevant to a language, with a MS-compatible font supporting the 
script, and the output glyph indices and positions of rendering that sequence 
with that font.  Then we can make sure HarfBuzz outputs the same.

If we have the sequences, we can pass it through Pango's win32 backend to 
generate the output sequences.

Remains, the fonts.  One recurring problem with Free Software Indic fonts is 
that when bugs come up, it's not clear whether it's a font bug or a shaper 
bug.  So, initially we can rely on the fonts shipped with Windows.  In that 
case, the test suite can only be run on Windows, but that's still better than 
no test suite...

> We also have some developers who can work on coding, but will
> need some guidance to get started, and have been talking to Scribus
> folk about Indic language support there. Is it possible for someone
> to help out these developers for the first week or two?

There's not much coding involved.  It would be most efficient if the local 
people focus on gathering the Indic data, and those of us who know the code, 
can focus on the coding part.

behdad

> Regards,
> Gora