[GRASS-dev] Fwd: Grass to Indian languages: Challenges

[Glynn Clements]

Markus Neteler wrote:

> Here a FWD (with permission) to discuss the problem of Indian
> fonts support in GRASS. I wonder if the new fond infrastructure
> helps in this regards.

Not really.

So far as the GUI is concerned, wxWidgets might do a better job of it
than Tcl/Tk, or it might not. GRASS itself is stuck with whatever text
rendering the GUI toolkit provides.

As for R_text(): the FreeType renderer should handle right-to-left or
vertical fonts (whether or not R_get_text_box() handles them is a
different matter), but it won't handle complex layout rules. Each
character is drawn at the current point, and the current point is
advanced by the character's width vector.

Anything else (i.e. combining characters) will require someone to
provide the necessary code in a form suitable for integration. 

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>