[OSM-dev] mapnik map and Arabic names

[Raphaël Jacquot]

Alilo a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> On the mapnik map, the arabic letters are not connected. which is not
> correct in arabic.
> mapnik arabic:
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=33.997890200140446&lon=-6.8455796898306565&zoom=16
> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=33.997890200140446&lon=-6.8455796898306565&zoom=16>
> 
> 
> 
> I thought in an earlier thread
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-January/010816.html
> that the problem was from the dejavu fonts but dejavu fonts render
> arabic correctly.
> 
> Is it possible that this is happening because mapnik is rendering names
> letter by letter and not taking the complete word?
> 
> Is it because of the process that converts osm -> postgis -> mapnik .?

the real issue at hand is that mapnik does not render words as one
entity. hence the problems with languages in which characters are
different depending on their position in the word.

using something like pango may be required for proper text output. thing
is, I'm not sure antigrain can do that. the only rendering library that
can do that properly as far as I know is cairo