[mapserver-users] Failed to show Arabic labels with MapServer 5.2

[TC Haddad]

on re-reading Steve W's point #2 - perhaps the specific bug is that
there is a difference with when in the sequence of drawing,
OUTLINECOLOR is applied

i) when ANGLE is AUTO, OUTLINECOLOR is applied after the whole label is drawn

ii) when ANGLE is FOLLOW, OUTLINECOLOR is applied after each letter is drawn

so this ends up making a joined Arabic label look "fractured" if both
OUTLINECOLOR and ANGLE FOLLOW are used at the same time.

TH

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 12:32 PM, TC Haddad <tchaddad at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jackey,
>
> I can read Arabic, and from the most recent attachments you sent I
> think the labels are printing fine. That is,  I do see the problem you
> are referring to, but the cause is not the font (the joined letters
> are as they should be).
>
> The real problem that I see is the fact that you are using
> OUTLINECOLOR. This is putting a 1 pixel white outline on *each*
> letter.
>
> This approach works in English and languages where the letters don't
> attach in printed form. But in Arabic, where whole worlds are joined,
> the outline should be applied at the level of the word, not at the
> level of the letter.
>
> As far as I know this feature does not exist in Mapserver at the
> moment, so it would have to be requested.
>
> Tanya
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Stephen Woodbridge
> <woodbri at swoodbridge.com> wrote:
>> Jackey,
>>
>> I'm not sure how much more I can help other than to say:
>>
>> 1) make sure you are building with fribidi2 version 0.19.1+
>> 2) Since character are generated individually on rotated labels, there may
>> be an issue. Thomas Bonfort would be the person that implemented the AGG.
>> You should probably try doing this with the AGG driver if you have not tried
>> that yet. That is what I'm using.
>> 3) try to locate a better/different font that supports Arabic
>>
>> -Steve
>>
>> Jackey Cheung wrote:
>>>
>>> Steve,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the advise, but we've tried the Arial font already in the first
>>> test, it's just the same. We thought it was the fribidi2's problem since
>>> 0.19.1 doesn't have their configure script changed, and tried the 0.10.9,
>>> but it's all the same, every word is broken.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Stephen Woodbridge
>>> <woodbri at swoodbridge.com <mailto:woodbri at swoodbridge.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>    Jackey,
>>>
>>>    Try locating a different font. if the text is being rendered as
>>>    glyphs and they look correct, but is missing the joining
>>>    information, it is likely that the font you are using does not
>>>    include the joining glyphs.
>>>
>>>    If you are using a windows machine, try getting mapserver via the
>>>    fonts.txt file to point to the arial.ttf in the fonts folder. And
>>>    change you FONT "..." to select the windows arial font. This assumes
>>>    that you can display arabic text correctly using the arial font from
>>>    a windows application like excel.
>>>
>>>    -Steve W.
>>>
>>>    Jackey Cheung wrote:
>>>
>>>        Greetings!
>>>
>>>
>>>        We've build the MapServer 5.2 on a Linux server, with fribidi2
>>>        0.19.1, to
>>>        try show Arabic labels. But the words has been broken down to
>>>        characters in
>>>        the generated images (line.png). Then we've tried on a MS4W
>>>        2.3.0 server,
>>>        but the images (ms4w.png) are even worse.
>>>
>>>        We are using PostGIS, and the database is using UTF8 (pgpr.png),
>>>        while all
>>>        Arabic data can be shown correctly (pg.png) on my English
>>>        Windows XP, and
>>>
>>>        we've tried some more machines, or on IE, to make sure that
>>>        Arabic text in
>>>        database are really UTF8.
>>>
>>>        Here's the images: http://www3.mapasia.com/jackout/ara.png
>>>
>>>
>>>        The part of the map file is as follow, where the "arbic-trans"
>>>        is a Arabic
>>>        TrueType font named "Arabic Transparent":
>>>        LABEL
>>>        ANGLE FOLLOW
>>>        PRIORITY [priority]
>>>        ENCODING "UTF-8"
>>>        COLOR 0 0 0
>>>        OUTLINECOLOR 255 255 255
>>>        TYPE TRUETYPE
>>>        FONT "arbic-trans"
>>>        SIZE 7
>>>        POSITION AUTO
>>>        PARTIALS FALSE
>>>        MINDISTANCE 500
>>>        BUFFER 1
>>>        MINFEATURESIZE 50
>>>        END
>>>
>>>        Could anyone please help.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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