[Scribus] New fonts as OT or just TTF/Type1?

[John R. Culleton]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 12:25, avox wrote:
> John R. Culleton wrote:
> > IMO until Scribus finds a way to use the TeX typesetting engine
> > it will always be behind the curve on text. Stacked diacritics
> > are handled in TeX by building them. The true signature of
> > TeXpert Han The Thanh is bult like this in Context:
> >
> > [H\`an Th\^e\llap{\raise 0.5ex\hbox{\'{}}} Th\`anh}
> >
> > --which is very clumsy but it gets the job done. The "e" in The
> > gets the stacked diacritics, grave over circumflex.
>
> That's exactly why you want to have OTF. Scribus will never expect
> such clumsy sysntax from its users.
>
> > There are many other areas, like hanging punctuation,
> > justification by paragraph instead of lines and so forth where
> > only TeX and InDesign (which uses some TeX code) have the top
> > quality output.
>
> The TeX engine also has disadvantages, eg. concerning international text,
> font handling and parshapes with holes. The new Scribus text engine will
> support whole paragraph optimization with bidi text and parshapes with
> holes. I also plan to implememt some newer pdftex ideas like optical
> margins and character extension.
>
> > There should be a way to feed TeX the text and
> > the dimensions and get good typesetting back. Irregular text blocks
> > can be calculated using an automatically generated \parshpe
> > command.
> > It isn't easy, but it may be necessary. It would give Scribus
> > better typesetting than its closest commercial rival, Quark.
>
> I had the same idea but more as an easy way to import TeX sources
> into Scribus (and keep them editable). I don't think the average Scribus
> user would benefit from it, but TeX authors could finally use
> a direct manipulation page layout program for creating posters or
> bundling articles in a larger document.
>
> Relying totally on TeX as rendering engine would surely alienate Scribus
> from its users. And it's quite possible to implement advanced linebreaking
> and justification in Scribus itself, maybe even with features TeX is
> lacking.
> Wait and see :-)
>
> /Andreas

I have just run out of nitpicks! I await the results of your
efforts. So long as the paragraph level justifying and optical
alignment features will be there then I will be as happy as a
clam at high tide. You obviously know TeX so you know what to
borrow and what to improve upon.

Go for it! 


John Culleton
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