[HarfBuzz] Font introspection tool

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12-12-18 06:16 PM, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 18/12/12 22:23, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> Hi Khaled & Jonathan,
>>
>> Here's another idea.  Now that HarfBuzz shaper is fairly complete, we've been
>> adding lots of what I call introspection APIs.  There's some more to add, but
>> after we're done it would be possible to write a tool that takes a font and
>> generates a PDF that exposes most of the font's complex features (ligatures,
>> mark positioning, alternate glyphs, etc).  I think such a font would be really
>> helpful in reviewing fonts.
>>
>> Since we don't have a good layout engine other than TeX, there are two ways to
>> write such a tool:
>>
>>    * Write it in C++ and generate XeTeX input...
>>
>>    * Just write it in XeTeX directly.
>>
>> The second makes a lot of sense, except that:
>>
>>    1) We need to expose the HB introspection API in XeTeX first,
>>
>>    2) We all know how fun programming with (La)TeX is...
>>
> 
> I'd favor some form of the first approach: write a tool in C++ (or Python or
> Perl or whatever) that uses the HB API to inspect a font and generate a "data
> dump" in some simple marked-up format that can then be pretty-printed by
> running it through xetex with an appropriate set of macros to handle layout, etc.
> 
> I wouldn't aim for such a tool to generate entirely "raw" xetex input that
> directly contains every detail of formatting control; more likely, generate
> data tables in some sort of LaTeX markup (sorry, ConTeXt people, but LaTeX is
> far more widely used and understood!), and then have a "template" LaTeX
> document and style that wrap the data tables with appropriate page layout
> control.

Ok, makes a lot of sense.

Humm.  There are JSON LaTeX (and ConTeXt!) package out there I assume?  That
would kill multiple birds...

> JK
> 
> 

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/