[TYPO3-dev] IM font problems

[Christopher Torgalson]

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Christian Lerrahn <typo3 at penpal4u.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>  this is not really a TYPO3 problem but I suppose that the core
>  developers should be aware of it. I recently set up a site which will
>  offer contents in Tamil. As TYPO3 is UTF-8 ready, I believed this to be
>  no problem. However, it turned out that while TYPO3 itself will handle
>  everything properly, there is a severe problem with ImageMagick. The
>  problem is that ImageMagick cannot handle OpenType fonts (and similar
>  other standards) properly. Tamil has a complex alphabetic-syllabic
>  structure which requires rules as the ones encoded in an OpenType font.
>  However, ImageMagick does not make use of any kind of shaping engine
>  (e.g. pango or ICU on UNIX). This possibly results in the GMENUs (or any
>  GIFBUILDER object) being wrong in languages with alphabetic-syllabic
>  structures. While there are certainly workarounds you could use, this
>  is very annoying.
>  I have posted the described problem on the IM bugs mailing list but
>  did not get any replies. I see this as a real issue for TYPO3 sites, so
>  maybe some core developers could add their weight to my request in the
>  name of TYPO3.


One thing you might also try is GraphicsMagick (there are static
binaries available for it on sunsite.dk [1] that you could use for
quick tests). TYPO3 can also work with GM, and since it's an
independent project, perhaps it will work or you'll have better luck
with the GM developers.

[1] http://typo3.sunsite.dk/software/linux/


-- 
Christopher Torgalson
http://www.typo3apprentice.com/