Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 69129
Add support for Graphite font technology
Last modified: 2017-05-20 10:28:53 UTC
Having support for Graphite font technology would be great.
It will be very good to add complete support for Graphite font technology with possibilty of using features. I know that there exest some ooo builds with the graphite support, but unfortunately there is no support for Graphite features in them.
Here is some information on Graphite enabled builds of OOo: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=OOo_20_graphite Unfortunately graphite features are not supported.
I have found some posts concerning Graphite technology in the OOo mailing archive and have decided to repost them here. They date back to 2003. Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 22:43:53 -0700 From: M. Evans <datafeed@gmx.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: [gsl-dev] Graphite and OpenOffice This note is addressed primarily to the Graphite group which has expressed interest in OpenOffice compatibility and cross-platform deployment. It's also an alert to the OO folks of Graphite's existence: http://graphite.sil.org I know that one or two Graphite folks monitor OO, but you may not know the specific OO project I wish to introduce here. OpenOffice is in the concept stages of designing a new cross-platform graphics layer and widget toolkit for OpenOffice. This project has no official title, but some have called it 'Toolkit 2.' Visit the GSL project mailing list archives for details: http://gsl.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=dev http://gsl.openoffice.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList The relevance for Graphite is that now is an ideal time to contribute ideas to OO. What would you like to see in Toolkit 2? Put another way, what frustrations have you encountered in existing APIs and toolsets that you would like to see addressed? There is some talk of supporting prepress requirements in Toolkit 2. You may have some special remarks about that. The current development version of OpenOffice handles right-to-left languages, but whether it handles mixed text (like Graphite) I do not know. Graphite's objectives are more advanced than OO's; but there is much overlap. For example I can visualize a Graphite plug-in for OpenOffice. OO could deliver Graphite from grunt work in terms of application infrastructure. Conversely, Graphite integration with OO might result in better internationalization for the whole OO project, e.g. offering OO to languages that might otherwise never see it. Feel free to contribute ideas to the GSL dev list. It is an opportune moment. Whether actual collaboration results or not, your advice and opinions are worthwhile. Regards. Mark Graphite summary, courtesy Timothy Eves: Currently most complex script rendering solutions will support a fixed set of scripts, with script behaviour being built into the rendering component; typically they aim to support the set included in the current Unicode specification. Therefore to support new scripts, you have to upgrade the software component. SIL required for their translation and literacy work a system to support the production and preparation of literature in the writing systems of minority languages and the freedom to develop and tune a new or adapted writing system in the case of supporting literacy for unwritten languages. Unfortunately Unicode does not currently support many of these languages also getting new glyphs or writing systems added to Unicode is a process that can take years. SIL developed an extensible system which places the script behaviour rules into a TrueType font as extra tables and these drive the Graphite complex script rendering engine. The rules are described by the Graphite Description Language (GDL) and compiled into the font. This approach allows the writing system expert to be able to learn a simple rule based language rather than having be a programmer in order to make improvements or changes. It was originally implemented in C++ as COM component on Windows and is currently being ported to Linux, a C wrapper is in the works and a project is underway to integrate it into the Mozilla browser. For examples of what graphite in action see the Mozilla integration: http://sila.mozdev.org/ and WorldPad http://fieldworks.sil.org/WorldPad/worldpad.html (a basic text editor).
For better typographic potential and quality!
I've added my votes to this 'un. I'm approaching this from a typographical point of view rather than complex scripts. I've long wondered (and ignored) what Graphite was, and only just realized that in addition to implementing Graphite's own "smart font" features, Graphite — certainly SIL's implementation in WorldPad — also implements OpenType features, at least on XP. I'm amazed I haven't noticed this before: seeing as SIL already have various OOo builds with Graphite support (though I haven't tested any), incorporating Graphite into standard builds would appear to be a quick and relatively painless way to implement support for OpenType features. At least the ones that OpenType specs recommend are on by default (eg LIGA for ligatures, and CALT for contextual alternates); features requiring input from the user, eg. figure substitutions, small caps etc., would require GUI work. It may be worth referencing this issue under other issues concerned with OpenType features, ligatures, advanced typography etc.
I would like to see better Graphite support, since I think Graphite is the most powerful smart-font technology in existence (okay, as a developer I'm a little biased :-) and it is semi-crippled without support for the feature mechanism. However, I need to correct the statements by "jurf" that Graphite provides support for OpenType features. Graphite knows nothing about OpenType. The WorldPad editor uses Uniscribe and hence OpenType for fonts that have no Graphite tables in them. But Graphite itself does not handle OpenType tables.
Thanks Sharon, you're absolutely right - Graphite only understands Graphite. Unfortunately, I can also confirm that the latest OOo build from SIL (2.4) with Graphite doesn't include Uniscribe, so no OpenType. Sob sob sniff...
I've taken over from Tim since he is now concentrating on other things. Working Graphite patches are in the graphite01 CWS.
See the graphite01 CWS for the current state of the patches and also i93645 since we will need the graphite library itself as a module.
The issue depends on 93645. It would be good to have this dependency in "show dependency tree" of the issue.
added 93645 to "depends on".
kstribley, do we have an integration target for this feature?
I hope for 3.2.
Graphite support has been implemented in CWS graphite01. Some test files (including fonts) are available at: http://www.thanlwinsoft.co.uk/ThanLwinSoft/Downloads/OpenOffice/OOoGrTests.zip (I think its too big to attach) The PDFs are reliant on the fix for Issue 102603 for correct rendering.
sba: please verify in CWS graphite01 Testing hints: - Install the fonts from Keith's excellent test files first. For one of the test docs (for Nko) you'll need the Kankan font from http://openfontlibrary.org/media/files/nko_computers/402 - test the docs (display, print and PDF-export) and compare with them with the provided PDFs - the new features are currently only enabled for Win and Linux builds - watch out for regressions from the trunk (e.g. performance in large docs)
Verified in CWS graphite01.