Freetype and Skia

[Dave Crossland]

Hi!

I'm a student on the MA Typeface Design course at the University of
Reading (red'ing :-) in the UK. I'm hoping to develop a new typeface
(and implement it as font software) specifically for the Android
platform, similar to the task that Google hired Ascender to do in
creating the Droid fonts.

As part of my research, I'm interested in learning more about how text
rendering works on Android, and the integration between Freetype and
Skia. I've tried looking around the Android documentation but couldn't
find anything like what I'm looking for, although I have no specific
questions at the moment :-)

I'm also interested to learn more about the lack of complex script
support; will something like pango be integrated in the future? :-)

--
Regards,
Dave

[Mike Reed]

More android fonts would be excellent.

Currently android does not enable the truetype instructions in
freetype, as there are patent issues around that. Fortunately, the
autohinter has done a good job for us when used a UI sizes. The
browser is a special case, as it needs to have fractional positioning
(for zoom). In that case we don't hint in the horizontal direction at
all (but do some light hinting in Y). This lets us draw the glyphs at
subpixel positions in X.

Complex script support is coming. We are looking at several libraries
(pango, ICU layout, etc.). We intend to take advantage of opentype
tables for shaping and cool ligature formation.

mike

[Dave Crossland]

Hi Mike!

The information about how you use the freetype2 autohinter is very
valuable for me, just the kind of thing I wanted to know :-)

On Mar 6, 1:50 pm, Mike Reed <r...@android.com> wrote:
> More android fonts would be excellent.

@font-face is going to make it happen for free software fonts,
although the recession might scupper things, I think... :-(

> Complex script support is coming. We are looking at several libraries
> (pango, ICU layout, etc.). We intend to take advantage of opentype
> tables for shaping and cool ligature formation.

I strongly recommend http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz
over pango or ICU. Eric Mader, the principle developer of ICU, and
Behdad Esfahbod, the principle developer of pango, will be at the Text
Layout Summit 2009 as part of the Libre Graphics Meeting, in Montreal
in early May.

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/TextLayout
http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/2009/

It would be really great if someone from Skia could be there... :-)

Also, I read a nice interview with you a few months ago when I was
researching Android, but I now can't find it; it was quite funny, you
projected the Google vibe quite well, towards the end it went
something like "Q, what are you working on next? A, Just simple
engineering." :-) Do you recall this interview? :-)

Cheers,
Dave

[Marc-Antoine Ruel]

Your HarfBuzz recommendation is unsupported by facts. FYI, Chromium uses ICU.

Also, I happen to live near but I'll be out of town during the days of
the libregraphics meeting. Too bad.

M-A

[Dave Crossland]

Hi Marc-Antoine!

2009/3/7 Marc-Antoine Ruel <mar...@chromium.org>:

>
> Your HarfBuzz recommendation is unsupported by facts.

Probably, yes, since its based mainly on my understanding of the
direction of development (ie, QT and Pango are converging into
Harfbuzz) rather than engineering specifics (ICU seems capable,
although AIUI it is used in OpenOffice which has poor OpenType
support.)

Could you point me to the facts as you see them, or explain them? :-)

> FYI, Chromium uses ICU.

I didn't know, but thanks for pointing it out :-)

> Also, I happen to live near but I'll be out of town during the days of
> the libregraphics meeting. Too bad.

That's a shame... I hope to go but may have too much college work...

--
Regards,
Dave

[Mike Reed]

The design goal for Skia is to create an skia-interface to complex
text engines (much as we do today for image decoders, font scalers,
etc.). Thus there is every reason to support more than one backend
(e.g. ICU, harfuzz, etc.) as time permits.

[swamytk]

> Complex script support is coming. We are looking at several libraries
> (pango, ICU layout, etc.). We intend to take advantage of opentype
> tables for shaping and cool ligature formation.

My native language is Tamil, which needs Complex script support. Right
now I am not able to view Tamil pages without this support. Though I
have installed some Tamil fonts, the characters are found split into
multiple pieces.

Is this Complex script support is in the 1.5 release or some where
remote?

Is there any other way to get Tamil font working in current stable
release?

[Mike Reed]

CTL is not part of 1.5. The work on it is only beginning now. I will
update this group when there are more specifics about its timeline.