Beautiful i18n Graphics Part 2
Last week I discussed how nice it would be to have graphics in your application use gettext to translate all the strings in the image, and render a localized version on screen. I showed how this would help usability, and improve the overall look and feel of the desktop. I also discussed several ways to accomplish this, many of which would require cooperation from various libraries.
I decided that if I wanted to get it done, I a) had to do it myself, and b) would have to do it programmatically on a case by case basis to ensure that things like text wrap or overflow are handled uniquely for each image. Here is the original image that Jono made using the Gimp:
Now here is a rendering of my GTK widget which uses Cairo to try and accomplish the same thing:
As you can see the images are identical with the exception of the font. Currently I am using cairo.show_text() in Python. However in the cairo reference manual it says:
NOTE: The cairo_show_text() function call is part of what the cairo designers call the “toy” text API. It is convenient for short demos and simple programs, but it is not expected to be adequate for the most serious of text-using applications. See cairo_show_glyphs() for the “real” text display API in cairo.
However Cairo does not provide a way to get font glyphs, and documentation says that you must get the glyph yourself. Being a person who doesn’t know anything about how glyphs are stored, or how to get them in C (let alone Python), I’m kinda stuck.
If anyone has an example of how to make text beautiful with cairo_show_glyphs(), or any idea how to do glyphs in Python, please let me know!
Use Pango.
Create a PangoLayout from the widget with the relevant text, then use context.show_layout().
whoa someone actually reads this wtf
DEATHRON