[Mono-winforms-list] [Mono-dev] GDI+ and Pango.

[Atsushi Eno]

That's even greater news :) Thanks for your effort over TextBox hell.

I lately found that libgdiplus on OSX fails to render characters
with Japanese default font. I wonder if pango-based implementation
may solve the issue (I seem to have filed a bug as #371861).

Atsushi Eno


Jonathan Anderson wrote:
> 
> Sebastien Pouliot wrote:
>> On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 20:06 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>     There was a discussion today on IRC about Winforms and Pango, and I
>>> was wondering if this patch ever got committed, 
>> No, it's not committed. But like I offered in a later email I don't have
>> any issue committing this* (well the most up to date patch) into SVN.
> 
> I'm pretty sure the last patch I posted to the list has my latest 
> changes to libgdiplus.  I can double check that over the weekend.
> 
>>> and in general what was the status of using Pango for GDI+
>> Even with the great work from Jonathan this Pango-enabling does not
>> cover all the cases already supported by libgdiplus (unless he has a
>> newer patch with additional features). 
>>
>> * As such it's not possible at this stage to switch to a pango backend
>> without loosing features that existing applications depends on. Which
>> means it will, for the time being, be an option (getting the new
>> features) that reduce compatibility.
>>
>> The "big deal" is that the current work (old mine in SVN and Jonathan
>> new patch) use the high-level pango API which is not complete enough for
>> some of the options offered by GDI+ (including many supported by
>> libgdiplus). This means that the code needs to be re-written in the
>> low-level API before being ready for general consumption.
>>
> 
> Yes, this is the case.  There may be a kind of hybrid high and low level 
> approach, but in any case, the low-level API will need to be used.  I 
> did some work with it, and it does have some of its own challenges, but 
> I definitely think it will be possible.
> 
> More recently, I've done a lot of work in the winforms code on the 
> TextBox (and its cousins).  There are several issues with the current 
> implementation there that prevent nice text editing with non-Roman 
> languages even with the libgdiplus pango support enabled.  I've done my 
> best to preserve as much of the old architecture as possible, so in my 
> changes to the TextBox it is possible to easily select the old rendering 
> code or the new rendering code at run-time or compile time.  It needs a 
> little more cleaning up before I submit a patch here, however.
> 
> I've recently taken a new job, so I won't be able to spend as much time 
> working on this project as I have before, but I'd definitely like to see 
> development continue.  Some of my former colleagues I think will be 
> taking on some development in this area as well as it is very important 
> to the group I was with.
> 
> Jonathan Anderson
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-devel-list mailing list
> Mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-devel-list
> 
> 
>