Hi Robin, Thanks for the summary. Good luck with your professor. Try to pick his brain as much as possible. People passionate about a topic love having any chance to talk about it, so I'm sure he will share a lot of his knowledge.
It is true that documentation about text rendering isn't as good as it should be, but I don't think is secretly locked in a few selected minds. A lot of these people manage to find some time to write down papers and give talks that are really interesting. Let me know if I can help you with your learning adventure, Luis On 10 February 2014 15:37, Robin Skahjem-Eriksen < [email protected]> wrote: > Thank you for the link. I shall look at the code once I get some time off > from my semester workload. Hopefully the course I'm taking this semester > will improve my C coding skills to better understand the text rendering > stack. > > The only reading I've done so far is the article written by Behdad > Esfahbod, "State of Text Rendering" along with the docs from the Microsoft > font resources. I have a link to it in my first mail. I believe Adobe also > have some documents, but I've been more focused on the specifics of > multiple caret placements for ligatures formed from vertical glyph stacks, > so I haven't been able to read everything yet. I recently discovered that > one of the great teachers at my University is very learned in digital > typefaces and typography, so I'm preparing myself with some questions I can > ask him and see how he responds. If I'm lucky, he'll let me pick his brain > for any deeper knowledge he might have on this subject. The IRC channels to > watch are #harfbuzz, #fonts and perhaps #freetype on the freenode servers. > > The current status of documentation and knowledge about the deeper aspects > of text rendering seems very sparsely documented and with only a few people > who actually know every detail of it. I was thinking I should perhaps > document my studies of this topic and hopefully manage to structure it in > some way that might serve as a future reference. > > Are my assumptions mistaken: Does most of this knowledge only abide in the > minds of a relatively small amount of people across the world? > > -Robin > > > On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 12:00:18PM -0800, > [email protected] wrote: > > Send HarfBuzz mailing list submissions to > > [email protected] > > > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > > [email protected] > > > > You can reach the person managing the list at > > [email protected] > > > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > > than "Re: Contents of HarfBuzz digest..." > > > > > > Today's Topics: > > > > 1. Re: Eager CS undergrad thirsty for knowledge about the inner > > bowels of typeface rendering. Specifically for supporting > > vertical ligature caret definitions. (Luis de Bethencourt) > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > Message: 1 > > Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 11:42:12 -0500 > > From: Luis de Bethencourt <[email protected]> > > To: Harfbuzz <[email protected]> > > Subject: Re: [HarfBuzz] Eager CS undergrad thirsty for knowledge about > > the inner bowels of typeface rendering. Specifically for supporting > > vertical ligature caret definitions. > > Message-ID: > > < > capa4hgv0_39ta2zt0vchmfegng4zm6indehcpabf9feudtk...@mail.gmail.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > > 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 B?zier 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 > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- > > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > > URL: < > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/harfbuzz/attachments/20140207/9d39909e/attachment-0001.html > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > HarfBuzz mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz > > > > > > End of HarfBuzz Digest, Vol 92, Issue 5 > > *************************************** > _______________________________________________ > HarfBuzz mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz >
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