[haiku-development] Re: Complex Text Layout and Rendering
- From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 21:56:51 +0200
Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Am 12.07.2011 10:01, schrieb Axel Dörfler:
> > Stephan Assmus<superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
> >>For example, I am very skeptical that fontconfig can be
> >> used to replace our poor font fall back mechanism.
> > Well, I see no need for this in Haiku, anyway.
> > IMO all we need is a file that specifies which font to use for
> > which unicode
> > block/characters if the specified font doesn't have them around.
> > That would
> > be pretty simple to do, and would even be user changeable, if
> > absolutely
> > needed.
> The problem is also that if you have two or more fonts available
> which
> can be used as fall-back, you would want to use the one that is the
> closest to the original font visually. So this is dynamic. The same
> should happen when an application requests a specific font, but it is
> not installed, you'd want the closest matching one.
I'm not at all convinced of this requirement. The only glyphs where
this might ever come handy are currency symbols like the Euro symbol a
few years ago. But there, it's acceptable if it looks a bit different
from the other characters as well.
For everything else, I see absolutely no value in providing such a
complex mechanism in the first place. Chinese, Arabic or whatever else
glyphs are usually missing don't care about the particular font at all.
And it will always look awful if you mix different fonts together for
the same characters.
I think a very simple mechanism would suffice, that doesn't really take
much font characteristics into account beyond maybe serif/non-
serif/italic/bold.
Bye,
Axel.
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