[WIP] Paragraph API (Rich Text)

[wcandillon]

No description provided.

[siderakis]

I believe this work was being referred to as the "paragraph API" in some other bugs/discussions. May I suggest including the name " paragraph" in the title for discoverability. I couldn't find it by searching and only stumbled on it when browsing.

[wcandillon]

@siderakis done. To give an update on this feature. Step 1 is to expose the Skia Font Manager in React Native: #1662
Then, while this PR is very promising there is still some small decisions we need to make in terms of the declarative API we want to expose.
From there, we will finalize the implementation in the following platform order (from easiest to hardest): web, android, and iOS.

[choudlet]

Hi! @wcandillon! Is there any testing or additional development work that needs to be taken on to get this PR moving again? I'm happy to help with this one!

[wcandillon]

@choudlet this is a great question. version 0.1.203 beta finally ships the paragraph module with Skia. Our plan is in the short term to offer a tokenizer to use with the paragraph module. This will enable what Skia calls "Client unicode": https://github.com/google/skia/blob/main/modules/skparagraph/src/ParagraphBuilderImpl.h#L63
Based on earlier experiment, we expect this to be something we can ship relatively quickly.

From there, we would be in a state where you would be able to extend the JSI API the same way we look at it for the Animated GIF API. It's just that API is large but the complexity is low.
We believe that this would allow you to use the paragraph module within the <Canvas /> element via the <Picture /> component.

From there, we would be able to add the declarative API for the paragraph module as seen in this PR.
I hope this clarifies.

[wcandillon]

@choudlet once #1877 is ready, you will have all the tools to implement the paragraph API "as easily" (famous last words) as you guys did it for the GIF API

[choudlet]

@wcandillon ok awesome! Yes I see all of the method stubs that you created in that PR that we would need to go ahead and implement. Happy to jump on that and help once the PR is in and stable!