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

Shriramana Sharma said on Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 01:33:28PM +0530,:

> Are they custom-coding support for just these three scripts? What's
> the big deal?

AFAICT, such piecemeal support is based on Unicode.

> By just plugging in HB they can get hey presto support for all
> Indic scripts that HB supports

Obviously, the applications should use HB for rendering. If apps do
use HB, then, whatever HB's capabilities could be used by
applications. Of course, with limitations, if any, based on
application, library, etc.

> as and when HB supports them. With the modular nature of libraries
> (as I understand it) hopefully it would be possible for HB to be
> updated on its own (like on desktop systems) without needing for
> the

Obviously, yes. But, dependency issues ... A generalised answer is not
quite possible.

As I said earlier, Android uses HB, ICU and skia. (ok; had not
mentioned skia earlier).

It appears that indic (as a group, or selected scripts only) support
needs to be turned on at compile time - at least that is how it used
to be for pango + firefox combination on Debian several years back. We
(the Indic user community) had to go through some hops to force the
debian team to keep Indic rendering enabled by default.

I guess something like this is happening in Android too.

-- 
Mahesh T. Pai   ||
``Those willing to give up a little liberty for a
little security deserve neither security nor liberty''