Future feature request: OpenType font controls

[rob.verhoeven]

OpenType fonts support various features, and in particular the feature to have certain character combinations map onto especially designed ligatures in the font. I realize this might not be a high priority or pertain to graphics per se, but adding support for OpenType font features to ImageMagick would make it a lot more powerful when it comes to rendering text.

As an example, for a Memrise course that teaches classical Devanagari script, I am now relying on a Python script that employs XeLaTeX to produce PDFs with Devanagari ligatures (available only in the OpenType Sanskrit 2003 font). Then I can convert those PDFs to PNGs using ImageMagick. It would be so much easier if I could just draw the PNG in ImageMagick directly, but when I try to do that, it is unfortunately not able to render the desired ligature, but instead shows the sequence of atomic characters.

Cheers for an otherwise incredibly helpful graphics editing framework, btw!

[rob.verhoeven]

PS. It seems others have also wondered about OpenType support in ImageMagick.

[snibgo]

Have you tried it with Pango in IM?

[rob.verhoeven]

Have you tried it with Pango in IM?

I didn't know about Pango in ImageMagick. I have tried and it indeed produces the ligatures, thanks!