Re: [ft] Rendering Arabic

[Tim Orton]

Hello freetype community,

Does anyone here know how to use libraqm with freetype (to render Arabic
text)?
I can render simple text with freetype, and I have just started using
libraqm for glyph shaping, for complex text.
Basically, I can get information from libraqm about the glyph index,
offset, advance, etc... but I don't know how to use that to get the bitmap
of the glyph to render.
Sorry this question is more about libraqm than freetype, but I can't find
another community to ask this question.

Thanks,
Tim Orton

On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 at 16:19, Simon Cozens <address@hidden> wrote:

> On 05/08/2019 10:39, Tim Orton wrote:
> > Can anyone tell me how to render Arabic text using FreeType2?
> > The main issue is that with Arabic, characters have different forms
> > depending on whether they are at the start, middle or end of a word. (I
> > think this is called "glyph joining", is that correct?)
>
> More generally, selecting the right glyph from the font according to
> text-level considerations is called "shaping", but we know what you
> mean. :-)
>
> > FreeType doesn't seem to handle this natively, so I think I need to use
> > another library to handle it, such as Pango or FriBidi
>
> Right, you will need a shaping engine. The open source shaping engine is
> Harfbuzz, and it is available under the MIT license so you will be able
> to use it in commercial projects. Fribidi is available under the LGPL,
> so using it as a library does not require you to disclose your source.
>
> You might also find libraqm (also MIT licensed) a more helpful
> high-level library for laying out Arabic; it interfaces between
> freetype, harfbuzz and fribidi.
>


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