Internship 2010: Optional OpenType features

Overview

OpenType is a font format that supports many advanced typographical features. For some languages this support is necessary because of their complexity. For Latin languages, most of these features are used to create beautifully typeset text. Many fonts available today, both free and commercial, come with optional features such as alternative numeral styles, ligatures and real small caps.

Agenda

The internship project "Optional OpenType" features will implement it as an experimental OpenOffice.org feature, which means that

• document import/export is incomplete regarding these features
• won't be supported on all platforms
• layout stability is reduced

system layer support on WinVista/Win7 (i112466)

• use the new APIs available in usp10 version >= 1.6
• announce the available features e.g. when enumerating the available font styles
• support the optional features when requested for the selected font
• emulate some features for fonts that do not support them directly (e.g. subscript/superscript/denominators)

application layer support (i79878)

• find, isolate and report (eventually debug and solve) problems and missing features in the application layer when very many font styles are available

related tasks in the application layers (i108684)

• debug and solve the application layer assumptions regarding advanced typography

Project Status

• the project is accepted for the summer internship