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Graphite (smart font technology)
Topic: Software
From HandWiki - Reading time: 3 min
| Developer(s) | SIL International |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 1.3.14
/ 1 April 2020[1] |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Multi-platform |
| Type | Software development library |
| License | LGPL, CPL |
| Website | graphite |
Graphite is a programmable Unicode-compliant smart font technology and rendering system developed by SIL International as free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License and the Common Public License.[2]
Capabilities and comparison to other smart font technologies
Graphite is based on the TrueType font format, and adds three of its own tables. It allows for a variety of rendering rules, including ligatures, glyph substitution, glyph insertion, glyph rearrangement, anchoring diacritics, kerning, and justification. Graphite rules may be sensitive to the context. For instance, there might be a glyph substitution rule that replaces every non-final s by an ſ.
In a Graphite font, all smart rendering information resides within the font file. In order to display the Graphite smart rendering, an application needs only Graphite support, but no built-in knowledge about the writing system’s rendering. This makes Graphite especially suited for minority writing systems that cannot rely on applications to provide built-in rendering information. In this regard, Graphite is similar to AAT and different from OpenType which requires applications to provide built-in rendering information.
Graphite support
Graphite was originally implemented on Windows. It has been ported to Linux. It is also available on Mac OS X Snow Leopard[3] although with AAT, macOS already provides a technology suitable for minority scripts.
Applications that support Graphite include the SIL WorldPad,[4] XeTeX, OpenOffice.org (since version 3.2, except for the macOS version), LibreOffice (formerly except for the macOS version, since version 5.3, Graphite is available on all platforms).[5] It was built into Thunderbird 11 and Firefox 11,[6] and was turned on by default since version 22, but was disabled in Firefox version 45.0.1 and re-enabled in version 49.0.[7][8]
Graphite support can be added to applications on Linux with the package pango-graphite[9] and on Windows with the experimental add-on MultiScribe.[10]
See also
References
- ↑ "Releases - silnrsi/graphite". https://github.com/silnrsi/graphite/releases.
- ↑ Byfield, Bruce (March 28, 2006). "Graphite: Smart font technology comes to FOSS". Linux.com. https://www.linux.com/news/graphite-smart-font-technology-comes-foss.
- ↑ "Why was Graphite developed?". SIL International. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_aboutWhy.
- ↑ "SIL WorldPad". Scripts.sil.org. http://scripts.sil.org/WorldPadDownload.
- ↑ "Release Notes 5.3". Wiki. The Document Foundation. 11 November 2016. http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3.
- ↑ "Graphite - Using Graphite in Mozilla Firefox". SIL International. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_firefox.
- ↑ "Firefox — Notes (45.0.1) — Mozilla". Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/45.0.1/releasenotes/.
- ↑ "Firefox — Notes (49.0) — Mozilla". Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/49.0/releasenotes/.
- ↑ Debian Webmaster. "pango-graphite". Packages.debian.org. http://packages.debian.org/sid/pango-graphite.
- ↑ "MultiScribe". Projects.palaso.org. http://projects.palaso.org/projects/show/multiscribe.
External links
- No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata.
- List of Graphite-enabled fonts
- SIL Language Technology products, which include Graphite and fonts
- SIL Graphite Sourceforge website
- Project SILA — Graphite and Mozilla integration project
- Presentation of Graphite for aKademy 2007, by S Correll
- SIL Graphite Font Demo for testing browsers
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