Re: [paragui-users] experiments in plugins

[Teunis Peters]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Roger D. Vargas wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Teunis Peters wrote:
>
> > started writing a pango plugin (for internationalization support).  It's
> > in <plugins/pango> in the devel-opengl branch...
> Exactly what pango does? My only experience with internationalization is
> using qt libs, there was a function tr(string) that translates the string
> (if you have the corresponding languaje file)

handles string manipulation and rendering in a graphical context.  GDK/GTK
uses it for various things...

lessee... it handles fonts
it handles rendering strings
hrm.

When you have to consider that while English (and similar languages) are
normally written left-to-right in a particular direction - and these rules
aren't the only ones - it starts making sense :)

Japanese: left-to-right or top-to-bottom, pages starting from right side
of page on right side of book and travelling to left side (this is the
reverse of English)
I -think- Chinese follows the same traditions...

Arabic (ignoring four cases : upper/lower/...) is written right-to-left
and usually scripted together...  (this is tricky)

Indian text may be left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, ... and
combining the letters together may require joining them in various ways.

Think of it a little like rendering handwriting and you'll get the idea :)
Add in character-modifiers (like umlauts used in German/... which are
usually handled as 'dead' characters rather than seperate characters in
the better class of font engine :) and some other bits, and mix until your
head hurts.

So.
pango renders strings.   As long as one remembers there's LOTS of ways
strings can be rendered (and are expected to be rendered) in various
language, a tool like this makes sense.

G'day, eh? :)
        - Teunis