FREETYPE LAYOUT

     What is FT Layout       Features       Requirements       Availability       |        home page

What is FT Layout ?

FreeType Layout is the name of an upcoming software library designed to considerably enhance the text-layout capabilities of applications and graphics libraries.

Briefly, while FreeType 2 is designed to be a font service, FT Layout will be designed to be a text service on top of it.

FT Layout will be released under the Library GNU Public License (LGPL).

Features

The following is a non-exhaustive list of features provided by the MLib:

• Extensive support for Unicode-encoded text. Full bidirectional and vertical text layout capabilities.

• Full OpenType Layout (version 1.3) support.

• Automatic font virtualisation (i.e. using several font files to mimic a single font).

• FT Layout will use the FreeType MLib library in order to benefit from its advanced and portable low-level features, like its simple and efficient exception sub-system.

• Designed for embedded systems: portable, small, fast and efficient. FT Layout will not use static writable variables and have a modular design.

Requirements

FT Layout will be written in industry-standard ANSI C and will require a build of the MLib library. It should compile easily on all kinds of compilers, as it is designed to be extremely portable.

Availability

FT Layout is not currently available. We're currently busy polishing the MLib library, on which it depends, before starting the real work on our text layout library.

Keep up reading the FreeType site for announcements in the future.

     What is FT2 ?       Features       Requirements       Patent issues       |        home page