[HarfBuzz] 'init' OT feature in Hebrew

[Maxim Iorsh]

Hi Behdad,

Please find attached the font. The letter "lamed" (afii57676) has a long
swash ascender, which causes the word beginning with it to look connected to
the preceding word. By using 'init' I'm trying to prevent it and to replace
afii57676 with lamed.initial (U+e000), which has a more modest ascender.

Regarding the principle of 'init', I couldn't see any feature which would
better fit for this purpose. The description at the Adobe site doesn't state
this is Arabic-specific or like. Do you know any feature which could be used
instead?

Thank you,
 -- Maxim.

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org> wrote:

> On 11/11/10 18:38, Maxim Iorsh wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I intend to use 'init' feature in a certain Hebrew font, but it seems
> > there is no support for this in Pango (at least not in my standard
> > Inkscape installation). Is it just my problem, or there is indeed need
> > to implement it somehow (in HarfBuzz/Pango/Inkscape/elsewhere)? Is it
> > supported per script or globally? Some Latin cursives also feature
> > distinctive initial letters.
> >
> > To make it clear, 'init' is not necessary to render Hebrew properly. It
> > is just an artistic feature of a specific cursive font.
>
> Can I see the font?  This is the first time I've seen 'init' being used in
> that way.  Does the font work on Windows? 'init' is *not* for fancy
> initials.
>  It's a feature specific to how Arabic, Syriac, and similar scripts work.
>
> behdad
>
> > HarfBuzz code suggests that certain scripts (e.g. Syriac) do support it.
> > If it is indeed so, I would be grateful if you could briefly refer me to
> > the code which probes the word boundary and performs substitution.
> >
> > Thank you,
> >  -- Maxim.
>
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