[HarfBuzz] GObject Introspection Change & HarfBuzz version

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 03:49:12PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> On 08/10/2012 03:44 PM, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 02:53:59PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> >> As of this week, I'm glad to say that I ran out of essential features
> >> to implement for a 1.0 release,
> > 
> > What about poor man's kashida justification à la Qt/HarfBuzz? I think it
> > is something that would block Qt's adoption of the new HarfBuzz.
> 
> Humm, interesting.  New HarfBuzz doesn't have the line-breaking stuff that old
> HarfBuzz did.  Same re Kashida classification.  AFAIK there was no actual
> justification in old HarfBuzz, just simple Kashida classification which is
> font independent and can remain in Qt like other Unicode segmentation
> algorithms should.
> 
> To be honest, Qt / Old HarfBuzz has such serious problems with RTL text and
> Arabic in general that Kashida should be no one's top issue considering a switch.

I agree, and it is the main reason why I never use Qt applications
myself (or why I love GTK). I don't care about such simple minded
kashida justification myself (Word and OpenOffice have it and I’ve to
play tricks with them to never apply it because it just ruins my fonts),
I just want to see Qt switching to the new HarfBuzz so people stop
telling me how my fonts are broken there :)
> 
> But we will eventually get to justification in HarfBuzz too... Eventually.  In
> the mean time, feel free to play with adding JSTF tables to your fonts, if you
> figure out how it works or find an implementing client.

I requested JSTF support from George Williams a while ago and he
(as usual) added to FontForge, but the lack of engine support killed all
the motivation to experiment with it. I should start playing with it
later this year (I have been collecting ideas for a while).

Regards,
 Khaled