What is the layout demo?

The layout demo displays a paragraph of text that is laid out using the LayoutEngine. There are two versions of this demo, "layout.exe" which runs on Windows 2000, and "gnomelayout" which runs on Linux. Both programs read a file containing the Unicode text to display, and a file that says which font to use to display each script.
 

How do I build the layout demo?

First, you need to build ICU, including the LayoutEngine.

On Windows, the layout project should be listed as a dependency of all, so layout will build when you build all. If it doesn't for some reason, just select the layout project in the project toolbar and build it.

On Linux systems, you need to add the "--enable-layout=yes" option when you invoke the runConfigureICU script. When you've done that, layout should build when you do "make all install"

To build the demo on Windows, just open the layout project in <icu>\source\samples\layout and build it.

On Linux systems, connect to <top-build-dir>/samples/layout and do "make all"  To build the layout demo on Linux, you'll need the gnome-libs-devel and freetype-devel packages, which should be part of your Linux distribution. The demo uses the FreeType 1 library, and the make files assume that the FreeType header files are in /usr/include/freetype1, and that the freetype library is /usr/lib/libttf.so. This is how RedHat Linux 7.2 installs FreeType 1. If your system is different, you may need to add sym links to where the files are stored on your system, or  modify <top-src-dir>/samples/layout/Makefile.in to reference the files correctly for your system.
 

How do I run the demo?

Before you can run the demo, you'll need to get the fonts it uses. For legal reasons, we can't include these fonts with ICU, but you can download them from the web. To do this, you'll need access to a computer running Windows. Here's how to get the fonts:

First, download the Thai font. Go to into-asia.com and click on the link for the Angsana font. This will download a .ZIP file. Extract the font file, angsd___.ttf On Windows, copy this font file to your Fonts folder, on Linux, copy this font file to the directory from which you'll run the layout demo.

Next is the Hindi font. Go to the  NCST site and download  raghu.ttf. Be sure to look at the  README file before you download the font. On Linux, you can download raghu.ttf into the directory from which you'll run the layout demo. On Windows, you'll need to install it in your Fonts folder.

There's still one more font to get, the Code2000 Unicode font.Go to James Kass'  Unicode Support In Your Browser page and click on the link that says "Click Here to download Code2000 shareware demo Unicode font." This will download a .ZIP file which contains CODE2000.TTF and CODE2000.HTM. Expand this .ZIP file. If you're going to run the layout demo on Linux, put the CODE2000.TTF file in the directory from which you'll run the demo. On Windows, copy the font to your fonts folder.

Note: The Code2000 font is shareware. If you want to use it for longer than a trial period, you should send a shareware fee to James. Directions for how to do this are in CODE2000.HTM.

That's it! Now all you have to do is run letest (CTRL+F5 in Visual C++, or "./gnomelayout" in Linux)

How can I customize the layout demo?

The text that the layout demo displays is read from the file "Sample.txt." You can change the text by editing this file using a Unicode-aware text editor. (it is in UTF8 format with a BOM as the first character; the demo can also read UTF16 and UTF32 format files) Remember that the text will be displayed in a single paragraph; you can include CR and LF characters in the text, but they will be ignored.

If you add scripts to the text other than Arabic, Devanagari, Latin or Thai, you'll need to find a font which contains the characters in that script, and add an entry to the FontMap file ("FontMap.GDI" on Windows, "FontMap.Gnome" on Linux) This file contains a single entry per line. Each entry contains a script name followed by a colon, and then a font name.

Here is the list of legal script names:

ARABIC
ARMENIAN
BENGALI
BOPOMOFO
BUHID
CANADIAN_ABORIGINAL
CHEROKEE
CYRILLIC
DESERET
DEVANAGARI
ETHIOPIC
GEORGIAN
GOTHIC
GREEK
GUJARATI
GURMUKHI
HAN
HANGUL
HANUNOO
HEBREW
HIRAGANA
KANNADA
KATAKANA
KHMER
LATIN
MALAYALAM
MONGOLIAN
MYANMAR
OGHAM
OLD_ITALIC
ORIYA
RUNIC
SINHALA
SYRIAC
TAGALOG
TAGBANWA
TAMIL
TELUGU
THAANA
THAI
TIBETAN
YI
You can also use the script name "DEFAULT" to represent all scripts which you don't explicitly list in the FontMap file.

On Windows use the full name of the font as it appears in the Windows Fonts folder (eg. "Times New Roman") On Linux, use the file name of the font file (e.g. "Times.TTF") If you're running on Windows, you'll need to install the new fonts in your Fonts folder. If you're running on Linux, put them in the directory from which you'll run the demo.