Re: [Devel] initial release of FTLayout/GXLayout

[Masatake YAMATO]

> Thanks for your contribution, I'll try to take a deep look at it in
> the following days. Having scanned it quickly, there are a few things
> that bother me however:

Thank you for your concern.

>   - OTLayout seems to be under LGPL. There is no chance that we're
>     going to distribute it in the FreeType 2 source package, since
>     this license is more restrictive than the current dual-license
>     plan we're using. For example, LGPL code is practically unusable
>     in most embedded systems.

Do you mean *I* cannot distribute ftl-20040225.tar.gz by myself?  Or 
FreeType project cannot distribute a version of FreeType2 including 
OTLayout? ( Of couser I have to inspect this issue by myself. )
Anyway I have just remoevd the ftl-* from the web server.

>   - Wouldn't be better if these components were provided separately
>     from FreeType ? I have several reasons to believe it'd be
>     beneficial:
>
>        - smaller size of the font engine for those who don't want
>          to use the extra features

We can make it small by adding a build option.
Current GXLayout implementation loads all GX tables into structures.
We know this is wrong. However, we need to do so to learn about GX
tables. In the future we will change the code to load table header only.
We will also add table verification code at loading time.

We have implemented GXLayout and OTLayout as font drivers. We know
it is wrong design now. We should extend TrueType and CFF font drivers
to support GX and OT.(You may agree with us about this issue).
In such case separating the source FT2 and FTLayout will be not good.


>        - different release points, so that a bug-fix in the layout
>          engine doesn't generate a new release for the font engine

I have had no answer yet. This is just initial release.

>        - independent testing / debugging.
>
>        - the ability to use a different font engine !

I don't think so. Our primary intent is writing a text layout
engine on FreeType2. I don't have much interest in other font 
engine. Is there any good font engine other than FT2? Instead 
we want to write a text layout engine using FT2's facilities: 
memory management, stream, service and resource fork accessors:-P

I think your approach about old ftlayout/otlayout is wrong.
Many good codes for typography hacking are in FreeType2. We should use
it, shouldn't we?

See also:
http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/devel/2003-November/009829.html
http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/devel/2003-November/009843.html

>        - independent license (LGPL if you want)

No, I don't want. FTLayout/GXLayout is written from scratch. So we can apply
the FT2's dual-license plan. OTLayout is the main target of this post.
If needed, Of course, I will remove from ftl tar.gz file. I have no time to 
estimate the time to rewrite LGPL part of OTLayout.

> For the name, I'm proposing these alternatives names that don't use
> the FreeType moniker:
> 
>   - FontScript  (because the package is really about international scripts)
> 
>   - TypeScript  (same idea here)
> 
>   - ScriptText
> 
>   - Semtex  (it doesn't need to carry exact meaning, does it ;-)
> 
>   - RedHat Layout (if you really insist)

If you, ft developers permit to use, we'd like to use the name FTLayout.
Because our text layout engine is not ICU; our code highly depends on
FT2. Even if it is not permitted to use FTLayout, we would like to use

- FreeLayout or
- FreeScript

We will use "Free" as prefix.

Regards,
Masatake YAMATO