Lightweight graphics stack company Fluffy Spider Technologies (FST) has forged an alliance with a Taiwan-based company specializing in multilingual fonts. FST and Arphic Technology will work together to develop “intuitive multilingual interfaces” for a variety of Linux-compatible consumer electronics devices and… smartphones, say the companies.

The joint research, development and marketing alliance intends to provide OEMs and ODMs with FST FancyPants interfaces that include Arphic's multilingual digital fonts and “Mobile Font” engine technology, says FST. FancyPants is a lightweight, embedded graphics framework similar to Qt Core, GTK, or the new disko framework from the directFB project. Oriented toward mobile devices — and increasingly Linux-based devices — FancyPants includes a software development kit (SDK) and optimized runtime libraries that support Linux, Symbian/UIQ, and Windows, among other embedded OSes.

Arphic Mobile Font support styles such as Gothic, Round-Gothic, and “Pop.”

Arphic is known for its iFont font family and “Arphic Layout Engine,” a program library designed for layouts of written scripts, including Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, and Thai. FST is interested primarily in Arphic Mobile Font, which is said to be designed for minimal hardware platforms (see images above and below). Supporting mobile platforms, including Linux, Mobile Font offers a scalable font engine designed for the small screen. The technology builds ideographic characters using stroke-based technology, which is said to reduce font data volume.

Arphic Mobile Font architecture

The joint offering between FST and Arphic will offer multilingual interfaces for phones, portable media players (PMPs), digital picture frames, set-top boxes, automotive telematics/infotainment systems, kiosks, building automation systems, and medical devices, says FST.

FancyPants architecture

Stated Robi Karp, CEO, FST, “Arphic offers an excellent alternative to FancyPants' base font option and brings a wealth of specialist skills and experience in font technologies.”

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