[HarfBuzz] Indic expertise wanted

[Harshula]

Hi Ed,

On Tue, 2011-06-14 at 13:22 -0400, Ed Trager wrote:

> So, based on what I am hearing here, perhaps we can summarize the
> proposed development process as follows:
> 
> PHASE ONE:
> 
> (1)  Several dedicated and knowledgeable individuals work closely with
> Behdad to establish a "template" Indic shaper that will more-or-less
> define what all of the individual Indic shapers should look like in
> terms of structure and how they interface with the rest of HarfBuzz
> and what the state table(s) are supposed to look like.
> 
> Maybe this "template" shaper is an actual shaper for a well-understood
> case like modern Devanagari usage for Hindi.  All the special cases
> like vedic extensions or whatever can solved / added later in a
> separate fork so that the "template" retains code clarity and didactic
> value.
> 
> (2) Based on the "template" example, all the specific Indic teams can
> then write individual shapers.
> 
> (3) HarfBuzz "phase one" then incorporates all of the individual shapers.
> 
> (4) At this phase, the Indic team members focus on correct rendering
> so that all of the individual "phase one" shapers can later serve as
> the reference implementations against which any later-phase
> implementations can be compared when running regression tests.
> 
> PHASE TWO:
> 
> In phase two, the combined HarfBuzz and Indic team can start looking
> at possibly merging shapers where it makes the most sense.  There
> would be no need to "force" a single "north" shaper versus a single
> "south" shaper.  Maybe you end up with a reduction in the number of
> "north" vs. "south" vs. "other" shapers -- or maybe you don't.  It
> will all depend on a more natural evolutionary process where the
> tradeoffs between maintainability, comprehensibility, and code size
> and structure are optimized over time.

Thanks for collating all the feedback. What you have described sounds
like a good plan!

cya,
#