artemp/tickets2issues — Issue #196: Support for Indic OpenType Font rendering with ICU 'Shaping'
Author: artemp
Created: 2011-10-11 15:01:27+00:00
State: open
Labels: Core_Library

Arabic font rendering with ICU is clearly supported, as I can see the routines here:

http://trac.mapnik.org/browser/trunk/include/mapnik/font_engine_freetype.hpp#L257
and the news here:
http://mapnik.org/news/2008/feb/20/mapnik_unicode/

Indic font rendering apparently needs its own special routines which are discussed in the context of OpenType fonts here:

http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/2591

Context: when gargi.ttf is configured based on this readme:
http://mapnik-utils.googlecode.com/svn/example_code/fonts/README.txt
the result is the same as the graphics attached to the mapserver ticket.

Thus, enhanced support for OpenType Indic fonts is highly desirable within Mapnik.