[Scribus] OpenType support in Scribus 1.1.x

[Stefan Baums]

> Support for some of the more exotic bits of Open Type are a work
> in progress.

I realise that OpenType support is very new in Scribus.

> Our primary interest was to be able to use some of the high
> quality OTF coming out of Adobe and others.

My primary interest at the moment is Latin?script OpenType, too.
Not Adobe, I lack the money and inclination to buy their fonts.
What I and my colleagues do is develop our own fonts for the Latin
transliteration of Indian scripts, primarily the Gandhari Unicode
font:

   http://staff.washington.edu/asg/pages/fonts.html

but also the Palladio HOT font:

   http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich.stiehl/fonts.htm

We are now trying to add OpenType features to Gandhari Unicode,
using the Pfaedit font editor:

   http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/

Hence my question about the status of GSUB support in Scribus.
What we need most is word?processing support for the mapping of
character sequences like ?d + combining acute? (U+0064 U+0301) to
a single suitable glyph.  My experiments with modified versions of
Gandhari Unicode and Scribus, using the ?liga? GSUB feature, were
not successful.  What is the status of GSUB support in Scribus?

> Would you be able to point us at some good Devan?gar? OTF fonts
> which are freely licensed ?

The freest Dev?nag?r? font that I am aware of is the Raghindi
font:

   http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/download/font/

It carries a somewhat paradoxical license, first claiming to be in
the public domain, then saying that modification and sale are not
permitted.  So not quite free, but downloading and testing it out
should not be a problem.

> We have found Arabic and Hebrew TTF, but not OTF. 

A set of free (GPLed) Arabic OpenType fonts are available from:

   http://www.zaban.net/paktype/

I use the Naqsh font.

The Hebrew Culmus fonts

   http://culmus.sourceforge.net/

are GPLed, but do not currently contain OpenType features.  The
author seems to be interested in adding them, though, so you could
always try contacting him directly.

Best regards,
Stefan

-- 
Stefan Baums
Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington