From kde-i18n-doc Thu Jul 04 06:49:39 2002 From: Keyur Shroff Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 06:49:39 +0000 To: kde-i18n-doc Subject: Re: hindi gnome & indix project(was Re:hindi) X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-i18n-doc&m=102576553904044 Hello World! I was browsing through the list and suddenly found an interesting discussion going on for Indian languages. So now I have joined this list. I am a member of the team who has worked for IndiX project mentioned below. We are willing to contribute towards localization of Qt for Indian language support. We have know-how available for X Window architecture, OpenType font, Unicode/UTF-8, and Indic script shaping. I would also like to take this opportunity to explain our case. On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:33:14 +0200 Lars Knoll wrote: > > The guys at Indix Project(http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/) are > > trying to provide support for indic languages right at the > > X-server level, by modifying the X-server itself. Their > > server(indix) even has support for open-type > > fonts(http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/technical_details.html). > > But IMHO, it does seem too complicated & whether such a thing is > > really feasible in terms of stability, et al needs to be pondered. > > -Pramod. > Doing it at the XServer level seems wrong to me. Some people tried > this for hebrew/arabic, but the result can be at best halfways > usable for displaying. You will get lots of problems with > applications that query font metrics on a per character basis and > assume these are correct. There is no way at all you could get an > editor working this way. > > So IMO the work has to be done on the toolkit level that offers > displaying and editing widgets. In our case this is Qt, and I am > very much willing to devote time to implement this, once we get the > basics in place. This means I would need some way to get access to > the open type tables from freetype or (best) Xft. Once we have that, > we are a big step further, as Qt already offers a lot of the > infrastructure needed. > > Cheers, > > Lars The approach we took in localization is somewhat mixed approach - Server side modification and client side changes. When we started work on this project, the latest version of XFree86 was 3.3.6. No TrueType support was actually there in X. I recall that a font server namely xfs-tt was made available during that time period. This xfs-tt was capable of handling TrueType font. Then someone released a patch for adding TrueType support on X server side itself by writing a FreeType wrapper in font module of X Window System. At that time the approach was towards X server side font handling. Starting from XFree86-4.x series, X comes with FreeType wrapper to handle TrueType font on the server side. Then people at XFree86 development team suddenly realized the drawback of X server side support and so now the current approach is towards client-side modification. In IndiX system, we have adopted mixed approach so that minimum modification is required in client libraries/applications. We handle OpenType font on the server side. It means that this modified X Window system is capable of handling substitution and positioning complexities of glyphs on the server side itself. On the client side we modified data entry widgets of gtk+ library so that the library sends request to the X server on "per syllable" basis and not on "per character" basis. This approach requires minimal changes in client library like gtk+ and Qt because all complexities of OpenType font are being taken care by modified X server itself. This also requires sending more requests to X server and not using client side function like XTextWidth. This will slow down the X server and definately put more overhead on the server side but the approach has paid some dividend also. For example, rendering Indic script is very complex but the client library need not be aware of these complexities. Even I can see Indian langauge text properly without any problem in applications like konqueror and Netscape using this modified X server. Only the input method has to be introduced/changed in the client library. We are very much willing to provide all kind of support as required by the localization team for Qt. We can provide all technical know-how for Indian languages and also contribute to the code development. Please guide us about how to start our work on localization of Qt for Indian language support and who are the lead developers on the list for this kind of work. Thanks and regards, Keyur __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com