Michael, your test on Teamwork fails with "TR" (Times New Roman, the serif
option) because that font retains its original mapping to DejaVuSerif.ttf.
I suspect that serif support wouldn't make sense for this usage. Most
likely, the server administrator of your system there needs to install a
font that is fully Unicode-ready and edit the font mappings accordingly
in "koha-conf.xml". Has that been done? For example,:
sudo apt install fonts-unifont
sudo nano /etc/koha/sites/{libraryName}/koha-conf.xml
Edit entries in section "<!-- true type font mapping according to type from
$font_types in C4/Creators/Lib.pm -->"
I'm going to suppose that it's best to only use those entries and not
attempt to add others, since the base entries in "C4/Creators/Lib.pm" can
and will be overwritten by updates and upgrades.
On Wed, Mar 5, 2025 at 4:28 PM Michael Leung <ykleu...@msn.com> wrote:
> Since I'm not member of the list-serve my reply message was rejected (I
> guess). I found that it works in Teamwork but not ok with NBS library, even
> they have same setting for label printing.
>
> Thank you for your investigation.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Michael Leung <boeet...@outlook.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, February 28, 2025 10:36 PM
> *To:* David Liddle <da...@liddles.net>; koha@lists.katipo.co.nz <
> koha@lists.katipo.co.nz>
> *Subject:* Re: [Koha] Printing spine labels in non-Roman characters, Thai
> in particular
>
> Dear David,
>
> Thanks for your input. Do you mean I can do a test in the Teamwork koha
> using our template and layout?
>
> I setup a test in Teamwork and found that both font type "C" and "H" can
> print Thai character, but "TR" was failed.
>
> However, it didn't work in our NBS library instance even I chose the same
> font setting in our layouts (chose "C" and "H", they are all failed). It
> shows a square bracket instead of the Thai alphabets. That is strange.
>
> Thank you for your investigation.
>
> Michael
>
> P.S. I want to use boeet...@outlook.com for future correspondence. This
> is my preferred email address. Thank you.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* David Liddle <da...@liddles.net>
> *Sent:* Thursday, February 27, 2025 3:17 AM
> *To:* koha@lists.katipo.co.nz <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz>
> *Cc:* ykleu...@msn.com <ykleu...@msn.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [Koha] Printing spine labels in non-Roman characters, Thai
> in particular
>
> Thank you, David, for chiming in with immensely useful information! I
> manage another system with which Michael is familiar, and your contribution
> has helped me understand it better. (I came into administration of this
> server only a few years ago. At one point, I discovered that there is a
> crazy number of font packages installed, and I wasn't sure why.)
>
> Michael, if it helps, the Debian package "fonts-unifont" is installed on
> our server. The relevant section of "koha-conf.xml" reads as follows:
>
> <!-- true type font mapping according to type from $font_types in
> C4/Creators/Lib.pm -->
> <ttf>
> <font type="Ft1" >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf</font>
> <font type="Ft2"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_upper.ttf</font>
> <font type="TR"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSerif.ttf</font>
> <font type="TB"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf</font>
> <font type="TI"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSerif-Italic.ttf</font>
> <font
> type="TBI">/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSerif-BoldItalic.ttf</font>
> <font type="C" >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf</font>
> <font type="CB"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_upper.ttf</font>
> <font type="CO"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_csur.ttf</font>
> <font
> type="CBO">/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_csur.ttf</font>
> <font type="H" >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf</font>
> <font type="HB"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_upper.ttf</font>
> <font type="HO"
> >/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_csur.ttf</font>
> <font
> type="HBO">/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont_csur.ttf</font>
> </ttf>
>
> I can't immediately explain the added entries, or why some of the default
> types continue to use DejaVu. But if spine labels work in Thai from there,
> then perhaps the same or similar configuration will work for the system you
> and Fred have put together.
>
> All the best,
>
> David Liddle
> System Administrator
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:52 AM David Cook <dc...@prosentient.com.au>
> wrote:
>
> Sawasdee krub Fred and Michael,
>
> I went on this journey back in 2022 with a library in Hong Kong to get the
> Label Creator to create PDFs that contained Traditional Chinese. I'll try
> to explain the process I went down (and how it might be different for you
> now).
>
> In koha-conf.xml you'll find a "ttf" section which lists a number of
> TrueType Font files which get paired up to font types that you'll see in
> the Label Creator. From memory, the DejaVu font covers a number of scripts
> like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, and I think Hebrew. Maybe even
> Devanagari. But they don't for Chinese and Japanese, and I suspect they
> don't for Thai either. (You can double-check by using the program FontForge
> to view the font files as glyphs mapped against Unicode code points.)
>
> What this means is that you need to use a font that supports the Thai
> script like "Noto Sans Thai".
>
> Most importantly, you need to use a TrueType Font file (.ttf) for this
> font. Once you have it, you put it on your server, and change the mapping
> in koha-conf.xml to point to it.
>
> Now... in my case with NotoSansTC-Regular, I don't think there was a
> TrueType Font file available at that time. Google only provided OTF files
> and the "fonts-noto-cjk" Linux package only provided TTC files, and the
> PDF::Reuse library couldn't handle either of those. What I had to do was
> open the NotoSansTC-Bold.otf in FontForge, flatten the OTF subfonts into
> one font, re-encoded to UnicodeBMP, and then add in glyphs for "space" and
> "hyphen" as they'd mysteriously vanished. I then exported as TTF, and I had
> a file that worked for printing Traditional Chinese in the Koha Label
> Creator!
>
> These days, it looks like Google supplies .ttf files from their website,
> so I think that you should be able to just download Noto Sans Thai, map it
> in koha-conf.xml, and have success. (Note that I have not tried it though.)
>
> Something to remember is that typically Noto Sans fonts also include the
> Latin script, so you'll have support for both English and Thai.
>
> Alternatively, you can use Bywater's Koha plugin koha-plugin-label-maker
> which leverages your browser and your system's installed fonts to render
> many different scripts. This is probably the most robust option, but for
> Koha built-in features and where you need support for a particular language
> that isn't supported by the DejaVu font... the above should work.
>
> (If you were so inclined, a person could technically make a font with an
> assemblage of all the scripts they need to support, but it would take some
> work and technical knowledge.)
>
> Anyway, I hope that answers most of your questions!
>
> David Cook
> Senior Software Engineer
> Prosentient Systems
> Suite 7.03
> 6a Glen St
> Milsons Point NSW 2061
> Australia
>
> Office: 02 9212 0899
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 21:47:39 +0000
> From: "King, Fred" <fred.k...@medstar.net>
> To: koha <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz>, Michael Leung <ykleu...@msn.com>,
> "koha-US list" <koha...@koha-us.org>
> Subject: [Koha] Printing spine labels in non-Roman characters, Thai in
> particular
> Message-ID:
> <
> ph7pr13mb5504fd89c93e444acc88fb8ee3...@ph7pr13mb5504.namprd13.prod.outlook.com
> >
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hello everybody,
>
> A while back I helped an institution in Thailand set up a Koha instance
> for their library. Now they need to print spine labels in the Thai
> alphabet, and I haven't been able to figure out how. I set up their
> instance to include the Thai language module, but the characters aren't
> appearing in spine labels. Can anyone assist them? I don't think they're on
> the Koha discussion list (or Mattermost), so please include Michael Leung
> ykleu...@msn.com<mailto:ykleu...@msn.com> in your replies. (And to the
> list--I want to know, too!)
>
> Thanks to all,
>
> --Fred
>
> Fred King, MSLS, AHIP; he, him
> Medical Librarian, MedStar Washington Hospital Center
> fred.k...@medstar.net
> 202-877-6670
> ORCID 0000-0001-5266-0279
> MedStar Authors Catalog: http://medstarauthors.org
>
> I don't know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact
> that life doesn't make sense.
> --David Lynch
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
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> Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Koha Digest, Vol 232, Issue 19
> *************************************
>
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