Hello Robin, I am in the opposite place you are. I come from the Computer Science world and want to learn more about Typography and how computers handle it. We should help each other!
Where did you learn all the typography/font concepts and terms you know? Recommend any good resource to learn this? Which is this IRC channel you mentioned? If you want to play with Harfbuzz, I recommend this example code: https://github.com/lxnt/ex-sdl-freetype-harfbuzz Your idea of having a dissection of font files similar to the famous dissection of executable files is a really good one. What do you people in the list thing is a good format to start such a project? Cheers, Luis On 29 January 2014 18:21, Robin Skahjem-Eriksen < [email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for link. I shall make sure to read up on that. > I am have slowly started the process of writing some software for Tibetan > writing. I thought about how to handle the complex caret behaviour, when > people on IRC stated that I should look into getting that done deeper in > the text rendering stack. > > Do you know if Graphite currently support caret placements for ligatures > which have been transmuted from a stack of glyphs? > > -Robin > > > On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 02:37:18PM -0500, Ed Trager wrote: > > Hi, Robin, > > > > You might also want to read up about Graphite: > > > > > http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_home > > > > I believe that Graphite has more sophisticated support (compared to > > OpenType technology) for caret placement for complex scripts such as > > Tibetan. On the flip side, in comparision to OpenType, Graphite is not > > widely used. > > > > - Ed > > > > > > On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Robin Skahjem-Eriksen < > > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I have started to investigate into the matter and I find that there is > > > very sparse information readily available. Microsoft had a very > interesting > > > document, which I have been trying to understand: > > > http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/tibetan/intro.htm > > > In the section "Examples of Tibetan" (bottom of document), the first > > > example shows how a sequence of eight code points are strung together > to > > > form a Tibetan "syllable". It's not really a syllable. It's called a > > > tsheg-bar in Tibetan and a Tibetan word can consist of multiple of > these. > > > Anyways, all the code points from the second one up to and including > the > > > fourth one are as far as I can tell formed into a ligature. I have > opened > > > the MS Himalaya font in Fontforge and seen that this ligature is > defined as > > > "tibSa_Ga_Rata_Shapkyu" in a location outside of the Unicode address > space. > > > > > > Now, if a user is to work with Tibetan text like any other user of a > roman > > > script language, the user of Tibetan script would be very > disappointed. The > > > reason for this is that it is impossible to place the caret and select > > > individual characters in this ligature. As of now, you can only select > the > > > entire stack as a whole selection. This is partly because the glyphs > have > > > been transmuted into a ligature, but perhaps also because there seems > to be > > > no definitions of vertical caret ligatures anywhere. > > > > > > How would one go about defining such an important feature? Should this > be > > > implemented in the font? Should it be implemented in the software that > > > handles the type face? Or perhaps both? While digging through the MS > > > Himalaya font, I found that there is a value for a Ligature Caret > Count. > > > What is this value supposed to be used for? For the ligatures that are > > > supposed to represent stacks of multiple glyphs, the Ligature Caret > Count > > > had values up to 4, which I hope can mean that the font itself > contains the > > > information I am looking for. Is my assumption correct? > > > > > > Also. I am highly willing to learn more about the inner bowels of > typeface > > > rendering. I have taken a course on Computer design and understand how > > > everything are bits and how Asssembly language and C handles this. I > also > > > understand the general idea about Unicode and how this is defined on a > low > > > level. I've also understood that fonts are basically Bézier curves > which > > > are rasterized to the screen buffer. There is still a lot of this > process > > > which I still find very murky, so if anybody knows any in depth reading > > > material, I would be very happy to start reading those. I have read > State > > > of Text Rendering by Behdad Esfahbod, which was a great overview of the > > > text rendering stack. But I would really like to get more in depth > > > understanding of each layer in the stack. > > > > > > I would really like to also learn more about Harfbuzz and how to work > on > > > it. I would really love to spend some time working on it, if I am at a > > > level where my code submission would be acceptable to the standards of > this > > > project. Is there any documentation for Harfbuzz? I've taken a quick > glance > > > at the source code and run some scripts and make commands, but I > honestly > > > don't know what's going on. Why are the C files named .cc and some of > the > > > header files named .hh? I can recognize some font lingo and have a > slight > > > understanding of what might be going on, but it would be really > helpful to > > > have something like this for an Openfont file: > http://imgur.com/a/JEObT#0. > > > I must also say that I have no idea of what harfbuzz is supposed to do > and > > > how I test or use it once it's compiled. I've tried running some shell > > > scripts and bin files that were compiled, but I really have no clue. > > > > > > Is there somewhere I can learn how to get a handle on understanding the > > > technicalities of the Harfbuzz project and learn what I need to start > > > contributing? > > > > > > Sincerely, > > > Robin Skahjem-Eriksen > > > _______________________________________________ > > > HarfBuzz mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz > > > > _______________________________________________ > HarfBuzz mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz >
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