Re: Rendering of fixed-width fonts

[Alex Perez]

Sheldon Gill wrote:
> Adrian Robert wrote:
>
> > On Mar 16, 2005, at 5:12 AM, Banlu Kemiyatorn wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 23:57:45 -0500, Adrian Robert
> > > <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > > > For another, I'm not sure when the y advancement should be used.  I
> > > > guess even the Japanese are mostly writing horizontally now, at
> > > > least on computers?  ;-)
>
>
> How very gaijin of you.
> How very gwailo of you.
>
> > > I have seen a *lot* of japanese text in the field of publishing that use
> > > vertical layout.
> >
> >
> >
> > Well, my confusion was this: since, at least in Chinese and Japanese, 
> > the same font can be used for either horizontal or vertical layout 
> > (correct me if I'm wrong here), and presumably has both x and y 
> > advancements set nonzero, how should a PS command like moveshow(txt) 
> > know to advance the point vertically or horizontally per character?  
> > The current implementation in Art just assumes horizontal.
>
>
> > It seems like some type of layout preference info would need to be 
> > passed from a higher level.
>
>
> Welcome to the wonderful world of complex script layout.
> Truth is, it needs to be much more complicated than just "preference 
> info". If Chinese & Japanese are confusing you, just wait til you hit 
> Farsi!
or Arabic, or Hebrew :)

RTL scripts in general are a PITA to implement/support :)