[Devel] Re: Linux Console in UTF-8 - current state

[Werner LEMBERG]

> WHY NOT CREATE A COMPREHENSIVE, SCALEABLE, STROKE-BASED UNICODE FONT?
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------

We are in contact with people willing to contribute such a font.  A
FreeType font driver would be added also.

David, can you already give more information?

> Of course, you would also need a rasterizer for scaling the font(s)
> -- but it would be easier and simpler to build than any TTF or
> OpenType rasterizer -- just ask the FreeType2 experts with all of
> their autohinting expertise to help out here!

You overestimate the amount of time we can invest into FreeType.
Hinting CJKV fonts is completely different compared to Western fonts,
and it currently has low priority (volunteers welcome).

> What's missing is an Open Source implementation that would create an
> Open Standard for stroke-based fonts.  Another thing missing is that
> the proprietary stroke-based solutions are only for the CJVK subset:
> I propose extending that to cover the whole (well, at least Plane 1)
> of Unicode.

I believe that stroke-based fonts make only sense for CJKV and Hangul
due to the composite nature of the characters.

> Secondly, and IMHO most importantly, you can, ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL,
> solve the common problem of having missing glyphs show up as open
> squares (or worse ...) because you can make the stroke-based font
> cover the whole range.

Again, you are overestimating the amount of time available for such a
project.

> And presumably FreeType2 will have, or acquire, the smarts for
> rendering the Arabic and Indic scripts properly.

No.  This has to be done one level higher.


    Werner