From: Scott Rushfeldt (sirushfe@unity.ncsu.edu)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 10:58:19 EDT
Paul Rohr wrote:
> At 06:26 PM 5/7/02 +0200, Christian Biesinger wrote:
> >Paul Rohr wrote:
> >> 1. native, non-bidi ... the well-tested code that everyone uses now
> >> 2. bidi ... some testing, not enough use
> >> 3. Pango-based ... to be written and/or ported as needed
> >[...]
> >> I also am willing to believe that we'll get to the point where #3 is
good
> >> enough that we should *also* replace #1. However, I'm stunned to hear
> that
> >> we're already at this point.
> >
> >As I understand it, #2 will replace #1; not #3.
>
> Why do it then? The whole point of doing #3 is to replace #2, right? For
> many many languages -- indeed for most existing computer users AFAIK -- #1
> Just Works already and *neither* #2 nor #3 is needed. [**]
If I understand things right #3 will not be replacing #2. All pango will be
used for,
from what I understand, is to render the correct gyphs on screen that
correspond
to the unicoded characters entered from the keyboard. While this might
replace
some of the Hebrew and other languages rendering code in the Bidi
distribution
it will not replace the Bidi layout and selection. Thus, if I am right,
the reasoning
for removing the non-bidi code is it does nothing more then the bidi code
and is
only slightly smaller making the keeping both versions more of a hassle than
is
worth. Also, with all the new features and refactoring of code to be done
it would
be a major hassle to have to put all the changes and debug them in both the
bidi
and non-bidi builds.
> I understand that simultaneously maintaining all three variants is a
> headache, but this sounds like we'd be dropping the wrong one now. If
we're
> going to have only two variants of the code for a while, wouldn't it make
> more sense to drop #2 and focus our efforts on #1 (needs no work) and #3
> (needs significant work)?
>
> By switching to #2, don't we expose ourselves to bugs in BiDi-related
> portions of the codebase that *we plan to abandon* (in favor of Pango)?
Yes, there might be more bugs, but from what I understand the bidi code is
pretty
stable now. As well, since we hope to some day say that Abi supports all
the worlds
languages it is necessary that the main build is bidi, otherwise Abi will
not support
all the worlds languages only Abi's bidi build will.
>
> I still must be missing something here.
>
> Paul
>
> [**] To be clear. I want #3 to move forward. Supporting more languages
is
> a very Good Thing. Leveraging other people's expert work to do so is also
a
> Good Thing. I'm just completely failing to see why we should abandon #1
> before #3 is further along.
>
Hope what I've said is correct and helps answer your questions on why the
non-bidi
code is up for removal.
Scott Rushfeldt
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