<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its" type="topic" id="tech-pango" xml:lang="sv">

  <info>

    <link type="guide" xref="tech" group="pango"/>

    <revision pkgversion="3.0" date="2011-04-05" status="candidate"/>

    <credit type="author copyright">

      <name>Shaun McCance</name>

      <email its:translate="no">shaunm@gnome.org</email>

      <years>2011–2012</years>

    </credit>

    <include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="cc-by-sa-3-0.xml"/>

    <desc>International text rendering with full Unicode support</desc>

  </info>

<title>Pango</title>

Pango is the core text and font handling library in the GNOME

platform.  It is responsible for laying out and rendering text, and

is used throughout GTK+.

<note>
The Pango layout engine can be used with different font

backends and drawing backends.  On most GNOME systems, Pango

will use FreeType, fontconfig, and Cairo to access fonts and

render text.  On other systems, Pango will use the native font

systems, such as Uniscribe on Microsoft Windows and ATSUI on

MacOS
</note>

Pango has extensive support for the various writing systems

used throughout the world.  Many of the writing systems used for

languages have complex rules for laying out glyphs and composing

characters.  With Pango, nearly all languages can be written and

displayed correctly, allowing users everywhere to view text in their

native languages.  Pango's support for multiple writing systems is

automatic; application developers do not have to write any special

code to support other languages.

Pango supports the kind of text styling used in typical documents

and interfaces, including italics, font weights, and underlines.

Pango uses a simple XML-like vocabulary called PangoMarkup which

enables you to set font size, color, styles, and other text

attributes.  Using PangoMarkup, you can specify inline styles

without manually iterating over text blocks.  PangoMarkup can

be used directly from GTK+, enabling you to style text in your

graphical interfaces easily.

You should use Pango directly whenever you need to lay

text out on the screen or on a different medium.  Using Pango

will allow your text layout to work seamlessly with GTK+ and

the rest of the GNOME platform.  It will help you create

portable code, and most importantly, it will ensure that your

application can render text correctly in hundreds of different

languages.

<list style="compact">

  <item>
<link href="https://developer.gnome.org/pango/stable/">Pango Reference Manual</link>
</item>

  <item>
<link href="http://www.pango.org">The Pango web site</link>
</item>

</list>

</page>