Moving Ω to an object-oriented platform

Abstract

The code for the Ω Typesetting System has been substantially reorganised. All fixed-size arrays implemented in Pascal Web have been replaced with interfaces to extensible C++ classes. The code for interaction with fonts and Ω Translation Processes (ΩTP's) has been completely rewritten and placed in C++ libraries, whose methods are called by the (now) context-dependent typesetting engine. The Pascal Web part of Ω no longer uses change files. The overall Ω architecture is now much cleaner than that of previous versions. Using C++ has allowed the development of object-oriented interfaces without sacrificing efficiency. By subclassing or wrapping existing stream classes, character set conversion and ΩTP filter application have been simultaneously generalised and simplified. Subclassing techniques are currently being used for handling fonts encoded in different formats, with a specific focus on OpenType. © Springer-Verlag 2004.