[HarfBuzz] Some questions about scripts and languages

[Khaled Hosny]

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 04:52:13PM +0530, Deepak Jois wrote:
> I have a few questions about script and language handling in Harfbuzz APIs
> 
> 1. It seems that hb_buffer_guess_segment_properties uses the LC_TYPE
> as the language. In my case, for whatever reason it is reporting it as
> ‘c’.

If your application does not call setlocale(), you will get the C
locale.

> How does that effect shaping, if at all?

If font have language-specific features, like for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet#Differences_from_other_Cyrillic_alphabets

Or how Urdu-specific number shapes are implemented in most fonts.

> 2. Is there a canonical list of languages that are defined in any font
> standard? Can/does Harfbuzz validate against them? The answer seems no
> from a cursory look at the code.

https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/languagetags.htm

Regards,
Khaled