On 27.04.2006 Jeremias Maerki wrote:
On 28.04.2006 Ken Beesley wrote
(I'll gladly send the source, config, .xml font files, Makefile, and pdf
output to anyone who is
interested in recreating the problem.)
If this is a known problem in FOP, when is it scheduled to be fixed?
So far, there was no high demand for this [combining diacritical-mark rendering].
I don't think it's on
anyone's radar. This advanced character handling is simply not
implemented, yet.
Would I get better results with XEP or some other FO implementation?
Maybe. :-)
A very good alternative to just going to another implementation is to
help us implement the missing functionality. Patches are always welcome.
and Chris Bowditch wrote:
the demand for diacritics support is very low. If you are not the
first then one of a very small number of people to ask for this
feature on this mailing list.
I've seen a couple of people asking for diacritics support on the
XEP mailing list. IIUC, then XEP has some limited support for it,
but I think it was mainly geared for Arabic languages. I could be
wrong though. Antenna House is another alternative, which has a
reputation for being very good at supporting Asian and Arabic
languages. I haven't used it much, but might be worth a try.
Or if you do have time to spare, then help on improving FOP is most
welcome :)
Jeremias/Chris,
Many thanks for your kind replies. I should have added that I'm an FO
beginner, checking it out for the first time, and that I'm generally
impressed by the work that you and others have done. FO seems like
an inherently good idea.
Unfortunately, in my linguistic work I need combining
diacritical marks, and decent Arabic-script rendering as well (including
Arabic "diacritics", which are different from the Unicode Combining
Diacritical Marks). And I need them right now. I have working solutions
in LaTeX and, especially, in XeTeX, so that's where I need to retreat.
If I had plenty of time, and a much better understanding of fonts and
advanced typesetting information like Graphite, OpenType and AAT,
I'd love nothing better than to take up your kind invitation and contribute
to FOP development. Perhaps in a future life ...
I know it goes against the grain, but you might consider adding a section
to your FOP web pages that explicitly states what FOP _cannot_ handle,
for example,
"FOP cannot handle the rendering of multiple Combining Diacritical
Marks
(Unicode characters 0x0300-0x036F), even using fonts like Charis
SIL that
include appropriate Graphite, OpenType or AAT coding for placement of
such marks."
with similar warnings about (as appropriate) Arabic script, Vertical
Mongolian script, Greek boustrophedonic script, or any other weak points.
That would have saved me a few days. :)
All best wishes,
Ken
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