Bitstream has released a new version of its text composition engine that reportedly enables developers to compose and render text in any international language. The version 5.0 of Bitstream Panorama is said to include new APIs and support for fractional sizes and positions.
The company also released Font Fusion 5.0, an upgrade that offers enhanced PFR format and optimisations designed to extend the functionality of the company’s font subsystem that renders characters on devices.
According to the company, Bitstream Panorama is a global text composition engine that enables developers and OEMs to layout, position, substitute and render characters in all of the world’s languages via a single compact API. Unlike Latin-based languages, Eastern scripts such as Thai, Arabic, Devanagari and Hebrew require complex considerations to compose blocks of text. Bitstream Panorama handles this task in a compact package.
Bitstream said that the new features of Panorama 5.0 include: support for fractional sizes and positions, enabling developers employ fractional point sizes to fit text into any region; unicode to image mapping, which allows developers to map a unicode sequence to any image; support for floating objects; and the addition of low level access APIs for FontFusion objects.
Anna Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream, said: “Bitstream Panorama and Font Fusion 5.0 are designed for today’s global marketplace – supporting for all of the world’s languages via a single compact API. This release represents another step in Bitstream’s long line of innovations designed to improve rendering speed, readability and portability on resource-constrained systems with limited memory and screen resolution.”
Bitstream noted that Font Fusion provides text output on devices and its small footprint is suited for mobile devices. It is also used in operating systems, software applications, low-resolution screen devices, high-definition television screens (HDTVs), set-top boxes, printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other embedded systems also.
