[TYPO3-dev] IM font problems

[Christopher Torgalson]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 7:26 AM, Christian Lerrahn <typo3 at penpal4u.net> wrote:
> Hi Christopher,
>> >  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/
>
> AFAIK, GM is dead. GM started as a fork which was motivated by the fact
> that IM never got a stable CLI API. However, just after GM had been
> founded, IM suddenly took the turn towards are relatively stable API
> and made GM obsolete almost immediately. I believe that there is no
> significant difference in the code base of the two. I have used GM
> before but never tried this particular thing with GM. However, I'd be
> very surprised if there was a difference.



That's good to know, thanks.


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