Fw: Re: [Aleph] OpenType-to-TeX and other musings...

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Hi all,

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:45:20 -0700, Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> wrote:

> Javier Bezos wrote:
>
>> Any thoughts about this?
>>
> thoughts indeed -)
>
> Recently (most of) the pdftex team met in person and decided on the  
> following:

Based on recent discussions with some of you, I support moving the useful  
parts of aleph into pdfetex. I am convinced that it will provide the best  
solution to the fundamental goals of aleph.

What aleph has:

1. very good-to-excellent bidi; I can depend on it for production purposes;
2. a good-but-by-no-means excellent input-output filter system (otp's).  
It's a bit buggy in places, and is a pain to read and edit.
3. support for large fonts

1. From what I have seen, pdfetex's present rl is nowhere as good as  
aleph's, so using the aleph code is an option;

2. Replacing the otp's with lua seems like a good idea. It would be nice  
to be able to, e.g. use actual font names for the final font filters in  
addition to hexadecimal numbers. lua has a table mechanism that may be  
able to replace otp tables in a more user-friendly way;

3. We still need to support the 16-bit level-0 ovf fonts. Even with  
opentype, a large virtual font format is needed and ovf's perform  
excellently in my experience (though some of the utilities are buggy). In  
any case, I hope it's not too much to ask that pdfetex++ support the old  
ovf's lying around...

Another reason for moving to pdfetex is taking advantage of and augmenting  
microtypography. For example:

One very important feature which may work better at the primitive/engine  
level (a la microtypography): glyph substitution that depends on the  
paragraph. For example: In traditional Arabic typography, one way to  
compensate for "underfull" paragraphs is to substitute a "swash" version  
of a letter. Another way is by stretching the cursive tie between joining  
characters (which is already implemented in my own Arabic system). It  
would be nice to implement these microtypographic features at the ground  
level, which neither Word nor InDesign are capable of (as far as I know).  
Combined with HZ we can get some pretty interesting high-level options,  
effects, etc. that the user can choose etc.

My indication is that the pdfetex production team is serious about  
addressing the needs of aleph users in the short term. On that basis I  
give my full support to the pdfetex++ effort.

Best
Idris

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