Panorama (Layout Engine) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Panorama is a line layout and text composition engine to render text in various worldwide languages made by Bitstream Inc.

Bitstream Inc.

Bitstream Inc. is a type foundry that produces digital typefaces . Founded in 1981 by Matthew Carter and Mike Parker among others, it claims to be the oldest such company...

. Panorama uses Font Fusion

Font Fusion

Bitstream Font Fusion is a small, fast, object-oriented font engine written in ANSI C capable of rendering high-quality text on any platform, any device, and at any resolution. The entire source code is portable, optimized, and executes independent of operating system and processor...

as the base to support rendering of the text. The engine allows the user to manage different text formatting aspects like spacing, alignment, style effects (bold, embossed, outline, drop shadow

Drop shadow

In computer graphics, a drop shadow is a visual effect consisting of drawing that looks like the shadow of an object, giving the impression that the object is raised above the objects behind it. The drop shadow is often used for elements of a graphical user interface such as windows or menus, and...

s etc.).

Panorama provides support for OpenType

OpenType

OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...

font tables leading to automatic character substitution for ligatures, swashes

Swash (typography)

A swash is a typographical flourish on a glyph, like an exaggerated serif.Capital swash characters, which extended to the left, were historically often used to begin sentences. There were also minuscule swash characters, which came either extending to the left, to begin words, or to the right to...

, scientific figures, etc. Panorama supports three anti-aliasing modes - monochrome

Monochrome

Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...

, grayscale

Grayscale

In photography and computing, a grayscale or greyscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample, that is, it carries only intensity information...

, and LCD optimized (Horizontal and Vertical).

Version history

Panorama has undergone several changes since its initial release as well as numerous additions of APIs to the core engine.

Major version	Minor version	Release date	Significant changes
Version 1	1.0	June 22, 2004	Initial release.
Version 2	2.0	June 20, 2005	New Shaping engine for complex language scripts. Support for bi-directional and mixed-directional text. Standard character set encoding supported (UTF-8, UTF-16, Unicode, and ASCII).
Version 3	3.0	August 14, 2006	Full support for Arabic, Hebrew, Indian, and Thai complex language scripts. Complete cursor rendering support. Support for multiple fonts
Version 4	4.0	September 24, 2007	Support for transparency in all modes. Support for Macintosh platform including ability to render Mac font suitcases. Support for BREW platform. Language related enhancements resulting in better application of OTF rules and enhanced performance.
Version 4	4.5	April 10, 2008	Support for Unicode range-based and style-based font mapping. Alpha channel support in LCD mode. 32-bit Unicode support. Support for enhanced text view and editing with space wraps termination style. Support for Tab Stops on any platform.
Version 5	5.0	July 15, 2009	Support for fractional sizes and positions, text rendering text on paths, Unicode to Image mapping, and floating objects.
Version 6	6.0	May 10, 2011	Support for Thai shaping and OpenType rules, Unicode line breaking algorithm, font ratio, shadow width, and shadow color.

Features

Support for Thai shaping and OpenType rules.
Enhanced support for the Unicode line breaking algorithm.
Better support for TV screens.
Enhanced font weight management and formatting support with font ratio, shadow width and shadow color.
Unicode Compliance — Full layout support for Unicode 5.0 and all international languages including complex scripting languages, such as Arabic, Indic, and Thai.
Supports bi-directional
Bi-directional text
Bi-directional text is text containing text in both text directionalities, both right-to-left and left-to-right . It generally involves text containing different types of alphabets, but may also refer to boustrophedon, which is changing text directionality in each row.Some writing systems of the...

algorithms required to rearrange characters sequentially. For example in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

, the characters may be entered on a keyboard in one way, but need to be rendered in a correct way on a visual device.
Contextual Shaping — Applies contextual shaping to the characters, i.e., the characters are substituted, combined, or repositioned depending on the rules of the language.
Composes text in all worldwide languages, which includes various complex scripting languages such as, Arabic, Indic, and Hebrew.
Supports key OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...

tables required for line layout such as, BASE, glyph definition (GDEF), glyph positioning (GPOS), and glyph substitution (GSUB).
Supports kerning
Kerning
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning is the adjustment of the space between individual letter forms vs. tracking which is the uniform adjustment of spacing applied over a...

information in OpenType fonts.
Text on Path — Enables text rendering along a path, outline, or a predefined shape.
Font Mapping — Supports script-based font mapping enabling the application to support multiple scripts at a single instance.
Style Mapping — Allows grouping of style-linked fonts to be treated as a single font. The engine "knows" to access a font’s own true-drawn style when you apply styles from the style menu.
Unicode Mapping: Supports automatic font switching based on the Unicode values of the text stream to be rendered.
Unicode-Image Mapping — Enables the developers to map a Unicode sequence to any image.
Paragraph Styling — Supports paragraph-specific formatting attributes including text alignment, letter/line spacing, and indentation functions.
Termination style — Facilitates the application to include an ellipses kind of termination style for the truncated text if the string does not fits inside the designated area.
Inline Images — Supports floating graphic object types that are inline with the text.
Rich-text Editing features, such as space wrap, tab stops, and dynamic property changes for inter-character space, line indents, and line gaps.
Supports industry-standard color formats, including monochrome, RGB, and BGR, with alpha channel support.

Font Formats Supported

Multiple master fonts
Multiple master fonts
Multiple master fonts are an extension to Adobe Systems' Type 1 PostScript fonts, now mostly superseded by the advent of OpenType...
WOFF fonts
Web Open Font Format
The Web Open Font Format is a font format for use in web pages. It was developed during 2009 and is in the process of being standardized as a recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium Web Fonts Working Group....
Type 1
PostScript fonts
PostScript fonts are outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional digital typesetting, which uses PostScript file format to encode font information.-History:...
TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
TrueType collections
OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
Compact font format (CFF)/Type 2
TrueDoc Portable Font Resources (PFRs)
Bitstream Speedo
T2K
Font Fusion Stroke (FFS)
Embedded bitmaps (TrueType, TrueDoc, and T2K)
Windows bitmap font format FNT/FON
Bitmap Distribution Format
Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format
The Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format by Adobe is a file format for storing bitmap fonts. The content is presented as a text file that is intended to be human and computer readable. BDF is typically used in Unix environments.-Overview:...

(BDF)
Mac font suitcase (Dfont)

Character Sets Supported

ARABIC	CHEROKEE	GUJARATI	KHMER	ORIYA	TAILE
ARMENIAN	CJK	GURMUKHI	LAO	PHAG	TAILU
BENGALI	COPTIC	JAMO	LATIN	PHOENICIAN	TAMIL
BOPOMOFO	CYRILLIC	HANGUL	LIMBU	RUNIC	TELUGU
BRAILLE	DEVANAGARI	HANUNOO	MALAYALAM	SINHALA	THAANA
BUGINESE	ETHIOPIC	HEBREW	MONGOLIAN	SYLOTI	THAI
BUHID	GEORGIAN	HIRAGANA	MYANMAR	SYRIAC	TIBETAN
BYZANTINE MUSIC	GLAGOLITIC	KANNADA	NKO	TAGALOG	TIFINAGH
CANADIAN	GREEK	KATAKANA	OGHAM	TAGBANWA	YI

Color Formats Supported

Supports monochrome and grayscale format.
Supports industry-standard screen color formats including monochrome, RGB, and BGR.
Supports eight different pixel depths for R, G, B, and alpha channel in RGB or BGR format.

Text Style and Effects

Embossed
Engraved
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
Left and right drop shadows
Algorithmic obliquing
Algorithmic emboldening
Underline
Underline
An underline, also called an underscore, is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of writing. Single, and occasionally double , underlining was originally used in hand-written or typewritten documents to emphasise text...

/Overline
Overline
An overline or overbar or overscore , refers to the typographical feature of a line drawn immediately above the text, for example used to indicate medieval sigla. Specifically, a line drawn over one symbol is a macron, and a line over a collection of symbols is a vinculum...

/Strikethrough
Strikethrough
Strikethrough is a typographical presentation of words with a horizontal line through their center. This is an example....

(Single/Double/Dotted line)
Outlines
Colored border text styles
Superscript
Subscript
Flicker filter
User defined filter

Applications/Operating Systems Supported

Cross-platform applications
Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

(HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

) applications
Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

& Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
BREW
Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

& UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
Embedded operating systems
Real time operating systems

Devices Supported

Consumer Electronic Devices, Mobile Handset, Set-top box, Digital TV, Printer, Medical Imaging Device, GPS System, Automobile Display, and other Embedded System

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.