Re: [indic] Re: Lack of Complex script rendering support on Android

jitendra said on Fri, Nov 04, 2011 at 07:24:59PM +0530,:

> 1. that there are some proprietary IPs involved which makes commercial
> organisations like Google think twice while including the same in their
> systems.
> 2. As far as GNU/Linux OS is concerned and as far as free web-browsers

100% agree with most of what you say; but please note that you really
do not need OpenType to implement Unicode for Indic scripts. It is
another matter that most rendering systems are capable of using
OpenType when an OpenType font is available.

It is another matter that no font actually uses a non-opentype layout,
which basically requires putting the "non-encoded" glyphs in the
Private Use Area (PUA), and then call the glyphs by a name.

Ugh oh. That also means that to make rendering complex / Indic text
non-complex, and really font independent, font makers need to arrive
at a consensus on the names of glyphs in the PUA. At least, that is
how I understand things. And things are not very un-complicated
here. In a mixed script scenario, a glyph name like "ksha" (as in
"akshaya") is going to have rendering engines go into a tizzy trying
to figure out the script / font from which to pull the "ksha" glyph.

In otherwords, something like "ksha-hi", "ksha-bn", "ksha-ml" etc
would probably be the only practical solution.

I hate to say this, but I did raise these matters, include IP issues,
some years back. Not sure if it was in this list, or Indlinux. Or
probably some other list. Do not have the exact dates, but it
certainly was around 2002.

-- 
Mahesh T. Pai   ||
Sent from my Computer. Running Debian GNU/Linux