> From what I know about Limbu, complex shaping requirements are > minimal and text can be read almost as easily without them.
I am glad to hear that. > As regards Kharosthi [...] although it definitely doesn't look > good and is probably very difficult and irritating to read. Yes. > I think it's similar to the way that many Chinese linguistics > journals write Mongolian script horizontally due to typographic > limitations, No, the effect is greater. This is not just about the writing direction, but consonants and vowels wonât get connected correctly. > In addition, if I did have the OT tables for Kharosthi, I don't > believe there is any support in _any_ OS for some of the complex > rendering nessecary for the language. That is correct. A chickenâandâegg problem, since as long as there isnât a font, people wonât feel motivated to add the rendering code either. Though from what I hear on the Pango development list, the Indic script code that they have is actually fairly generic, and needs only minor tweaking for adding new Indic fonts. Then again, things may be complicated by the rightâtoâleft writing direction of KharoááhÄ. That will be for the programmers to sort out, which I am not, so I concentrate on the encoding and font side. > I'm also under the impression that the situation of hPhags-pa is > similar to that of Limbu, although I don't know much about the > script. Neither do I, but here is a page http://www.ancientscripts.com/hphagspa.html that says hPhagsâpa (like Tibetan, from which it is derived) uses medial vowel signs (which arenât illustrated on that page). The encoding of Tibetan (and therefore presumably hPhagsâpa) is handled differently from the standard Indian model in Unicode. > But if you are using it in a scholarly document otherwise > writtten in English, the Kharosthi should still be perfectly > readable Here I disagree. Yes, scholarly applications is what we are interested in, and there rendering needs to be _accurate_. At least as much as in a hypothetical newspaper. > - it's in the wrong direction, yes, it uses an ugly control > symbol where there should be conjunct consonants, For a scholarly publication, those are major and unacceptable points right there. Add to that the fact that vowels would not be correctly connected with their bases. Also, this is not just for palaeographic discussions with the occasional letter in KharoááhÄ. For that we would not have needed an encoding the first places, but could just have inserted a few images. Rather, think of whole new applications that make actual use of the computerâencoded form of the KharoááhÄ material, like comprehensive palaeographic databases. Have a look at: http://www.indoskript.de/ > I somehow doubt it - my font provides them with basic > glyphshapes already, which they would otherwise have to come up > with on their own, and all they have to come up with is opentype > tables and a good name for their font. First and foremost, let me stress that your development of those glyph shapes is _highly_ appreciated. It really makes us happy to see that people outside our small circle start getting interested in the KharoááhÄ script, now that it is included in Unicode. So now we have actually quite a number of glyph shapes in different styles. Not only yours, the letter illustrations that Andrew uses throughout his MA thesis (that he sent you a link to) are also outlines in TrueType format. The next step forward will now be to develop a set of OpenType rules, and maybe we can even agree on common glyph naming schemes and such, so that we can easily share those OpenType rules between our fonts and yours. That would be great. > And I will repeat, this does _not_ impact multiple scripts. Even if none of the other scripts in your font need complex rendering rules, there is still the fontconfig issue. Definitely not your fault, but fontconfigâs. But since fontconfig is the basis for font matching in Debian, and since this is about making a package for Debian, the problem has to be addressed and worked around until (hopefully) fontconfig becomes smart enough to look beyond the glyphs and recognise which fonts also have combining rules. > I am well aware of the shortcomings of my Burmese font, and I > have already told Paul Wise. Actually, your Burmese font per se looks great, and many thanks for producing that and making it available under the GPL! The spacing problem seems to lie on the side of the rendering engine, and apparently, as Paul says, the Freetype people are looking into it. All best wishes, Stefan -- Stefan Baums Asian Languages and Literature University of Washington -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
