Re: can Context render complex scripts?

[Michael Saunders <odradek5@gmail.com>]

> OpenType (just ignore file extension for the moment) is a rather dump
> standard in the sense that it requires the engine to have some knowledge
> about the writing system at hand.
...
> So, what we have here is that ConTeXt has no special knowledge about
> Indic scripts, and thus it will not apply the feature properly according
> the linguistic rules.

It seems to me that, since Hans can't be expected to write special
code for dozens of Indic scripts, let alone for every script in the
world, the pragmatic solution would be a method for Context to harness
external engines (ICU, Pango, Graphite, Uniscribe, or whatever).  If
that's not possible, or if he doesn't want to do it, or until he is
able to work with scholars on each special case, programs like Notepad
will be able to do something that Context can't.   As a casual user,
it's not an urgent need for me.  I had read that Aleph functionality
had been integrated into LuaTeX (though I never found anything very
detailed about that) and thought that everything was okay.  I assume
that Luatex/Context or some future TeX  will have this functionality
someday, however it's implemented.  I'll just keep watching.
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