Re: Uniscribe for Win32 Unicoders

From: peter_constable@sil.org
Date: Tue Sep 21 1999 - 00:50:20 EDT


>I hope I'm not the only one who would like to know the answers
       to these questions. I think Uniscribe will do a lot for the
       cause of Unicode and multilinual software on Win32 once a few
       of us figure out how to use it and deploy it and start
       spreading the word.

       No, you're not by any means the only one who would like to know
       the answers to those questions. We've got more besides!

       I'd summarise our questions as:

       - What is the nature of the relationship between Uniscribe and
       OpenType? I.e.:

       - Does USP10.DLL provide support for all of the capabilities of
       OT? For example, OT allows language-specific rules to be
       included. (Actually, "language" is not the real notion the
       Typography folks have in mind, but it's an acceptable
       simplification for purposes of this discussion.) Does USP10
       support language-specific shaping behaviour?

       - Does USP10.DLL support the 'required features' concept of OT
       whereby a font can specify which rules *must* be obeyed for a
       script?

       - Just how generic is the knowledge of script behaviour that's
       in USP10.DLL? E.g. could I achieve rendering of Arabic or of
       Devanagari using shaping behaviour that is different than those
       behaviours MS provides for Arabic and Devanagari simply by
       chaning the data in the OT font tables? I.e. just how
       extensible is the Uniscribe/OT system?

       Peter



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