Project Proposal: Improving the text tool

I am interested in Improving the text tool project as part of GSoC. Here is my initial research and ideas, with a request for comments/feedback from both developers and GIMP users. A summary of the main goals:

Improve some existing features and add some new features.
Add OpenType options (at least a glyphs panel) in to the UI.

Initial Ideas

Support fonts which are not Directly supported in CSS.
When a character is selected from typed text, a small box should appear below (and above in case of vertically written languages) the character with some (6 at most maybe?) alternate glyphs from the font for only that character.
The glyphs panel should have options to filter the glyphs (based on the selected character, the language...etc).
If a font has too many glyphs load by batch (eg: 50 at a time), and there should be a “next” and “previous” buttons.
Fonts should be searchable by language or Opentype feature.
Font selection should be a drop-down list with preview, and it should include recently used fonts.
Implement some Opentype features for ligatures.
Add a panel for alternate glyphs.
Make the on-canvas text-tool movable.

Relevant links

wiki draft for improving text tool features

wiki draft for improving Opentype support

Initial Questions

General feedback on the proposal?

Edit: I have rewritten the proposal.

Edited Apr 03, 2023 by Alx Sa