[Libreoffice] Bringing some sanity to interline spacing

[Khaled Hosny]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 12:12:28PM +0200, Eike Rathke wrote:
> > > This only done for 'unx' similar work is needed for 'win' and 'aqua',
> > > but I'm not familiar with these platforms and can't test on it.
> > 
> > I wonder if this patch will then introduce significant rendering
> > differences between platforms? Or do we have such anyway already (even
> > if the same fonts are present)?
> 
> Even if it may currently render differently, I think using the correct
> font metrics on one system where people complained about it is a step
> into the right direction. We use different layout engines on unx,mac,win
> and hopefully each system positions glyphs as accurately as possible
> when given the right input.

I had this idea in mind for a while: unifying the text layout code of
all platforms, using HarfBuzz, Cairo, FreeType etc. This would give us
more control over text layout (e.g. we can support user selectable
OpenType features and more typographic niceties) as well as consistent
text rendering on all platforms. The downside is that might give the
user different experience between LibreOffice and applications using
native APIs (though it can be a good thing sometimes, for example apple
does not support Indic scripts in their OpenType implementation, while
FOSS font stack does). It also means less code to maintain and debug.
But I'm still far from understanding the current text layout code to
seriously propose this.

Mozilla is moving into this direction as well.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Egyptian
 Arab
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/attachments/20110902/d5ab8b23/attachment.pgp>