Hi Peter! > Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you on this. What's UTA?
UTA (Unified Typesetting API) is my attempt to provide an API for typesetting that can be used by all kinds of text processing applications. The primary goals are * the ability that support for new scripts can easily be added * support for low and high quality implementations of the API Currently UTA provides an API for line-breaking similar to TeX's mechanism (also TeX's behavior should be a special case of my model) which I think is quite stable and will change only little till the Milestone 1 release anytime around 9/1/2004. It also provides an implementation of the simple-fit line-breaking algorithm as proof of concept. There's also a helper package to allow global optimizing line-break algorithms using a BSD licensed graph theory package (only found a forrest report about an apache graph library without further information, Jeremias). This package may be irrelevant in future releases and is not needed to use the API. Furthermore there's the API of how I think multilingual text can be set. This is subject to change, I'll have to refactor/cleanup a bit and add some ideas. Note that the code currently reflects my knowledge and therefore is subject to change and perhaps will not fulfill all future requirements right now. Note also that my focus currently only lies on the task to define an API on how to typeset multilingual glyphs and how to break a paragraph into lines. I can't currently provide implementations for typesetting nor for advanced line-breaking algorithms. UTA addresses some of FOP's low priority tasks and I think the task you're currently working on. I had to take a look into the problems of multilingual typesetting, TeX, XSL, the Java API, Pango, ATSUI,... I do not claim to know everything about all of this technologies but I think I can be of use for you providing you with further reading or something else. So, just ask, if there are questions. Furthermore I'm currently talking to the ExTeX people. IMO ExTeX will be _very_ similar to FOP in the end effect, but currently has different priorities. And of course it will be based on TeX in some kind not XSL. Cause they want to eliminate TeX's drawbacks (including multilingual text) it perhaps makes sense to get in touch with them too. BTW: They would like to use the Batik code for reading TTF-files. I think there are Batik members here too? Perhaps one of you could drop them a line... Congratulations to your marriage from me too, Christian Z.
