[HarfBuzz] Layout engine and vertical paragraphs

[eduardo]

Thanks a lot for your answer Behdad!

On 16/05/2011 21:42, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> I'm started working with ICU which is huge, and I would like to know whether
>> hb would be able to manage layouts in the same way ICU does.
> I'm not very familiar with ICU so I cannot comment there.

Well, my actual questions were below :)

>> Would I need to separate the text in different scripts
> Yes.  And do bidi, line-breaking, etc.

That's somehow confusing to me. ICU works in the same way and there 
should be a good reason, but I don't understand were the point is. 
Usually the client has no knowledge about the text, and it just need to 
know what glyphs to draw and in what positions. Why cannot the client 
simply provide the whole paragraph and let ICU/HB to deal with 
multiscripting, Bidi, etc?

> Checkout src/hb-view.c.   That doesn't handle multi-script though, but you get
> the idea.

It looks easier than ICU.

ICU completely lacks functions like hb_ft_font_create which must be done 
by hand. And it seems that somehow hb can guess the script of a string 
without forcing the client to analyze it which is great (at least for 
single-scripted text).

The problem is that I have no idea about how to compile it in Windows. 
But I'm going to open another subject for that.

Thanks and best regards!