Software:Graphite (SIL)

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Short description: Programmable Unicode-compliant smart-font technology and rendering system developed by SIL International as free software


Graphite
Developer(s)SIL International
Stable release
1.3.14 / 1 April 2020; 3 years ago (2020-04-01)[1]
Operating systemMulti-platform
TypeSoftware development library
LicenseLGPL, CPL
Websitegraphite.sil.org

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, Mac 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 become availably 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

  1. ↑ "Releases - silnrsi/graphite". https://github.com/silnrsi/graphite/releases. Retrieved 1 April 2020. 
  2. ↑ 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. 
  3. ↑ "Why was Graphite developed?". SIL International. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_aboutWhy. 
  4. ↑ "SIL WorldPad". Scripts.sil.org. http://scripts.sil.org/WorldPadDownload. Retrieved 2012-08-14. 
  5. ↑ "Release Notes 5.3". Wiki. The Document Foundation. 11 November 2016. http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3. Retrieved 13 December 2016. 
  6. ↑ "Graphite - Using Graphite in Mozilla Firefox". SIL International. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_firefox. Retrieved 24 April 2013. 
  7. ↑ "Firefox — Notes (45.0.1) — Mozilla". Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/45.0.1/releasenotes/. Retrieved 24 September 2016. 
  8. ↑ "Firefox — Notes (49.0) — Mozilla". Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/49.0/releasenotes/. Retrieved 24 September 2016. 
  9. ↑ Debian Webmaster, webmaster@debian.org. "pango-graphite". Packages.debian.org. http://packages.debian.org/sid/pango-graphite. Retrieved 2012-08-14. 
  10. ↑ "MultiScribe". Projects.palaso.org. Archived from the original on 2012-03-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20120303155356/http://projects.palaso.org/projects/show/multiscribe. Retrieved 2012-08-14. 

External links





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