Re: Glyphs and the text system

[BALATON Zoltan]

Hello,

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Alexander Malmberg wrote:
> I'm currently working on rewriting NSLayoutManager as a part of fixing
> the text system. Basic glyph handling is done, and the new
> implementation is completely glyph based, which brings up a few
> questions:

I must admit in advance that I had no time to check what is the current
state of things so excuse me if my questions are completly silly. I would
very much appreciate corrections and explanations if I'm missing
something.

> 1.
> Glyph generation. This needs to be done in the backend. I'll write one
> for the freetype-based code in back-art, but other backends might be a
> problem. I can write a dumb default one that works like the current one,
> though.

What exactly is glyph generation? Is it the translation of character codes
to glyph codes appropriate for the current font? Postscript uses encodings
and functions provided by fonts for this. It would probably be a good idea
to use something similar in the backend. Maybe there are already methods
or a class in OpenStep to provide an interface to postscript encodings
that the backend could implement with knowledge about a font, but I may be
wrong as I have no time to check.

> 2.
> To display I'll use GSShowGlyphs(), so this will need to be implemented
> as well. I'm not sure about how this affects printing.

Using a similar construct to postscript encodings may help printing as
well.

Regards,
BALATON Zoltan