[Lohit-devel-list] Releasing Lohit Devanagari Today!!

[Bernard Massot]

On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:55:46AM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> The main problem is that locl-like technologies require apps to know
> the language of the text they are rendering. And all too often they do
> not provide any mean for the user to set it.
I think the two main types of applications that can mix languages within
a document are word processors (and other office programs) and web
browsers.
Word processors like OpenOffice Writer already have a mean to specify
language because it's needed for spell checking, hyphenation, etc.
Web browsers render HTML, which has a "lang" attribute usable with any
tag.
Applications that don't mix languages can just rely on locale to know
what language to use.
Can you think of really more complicated cases?

> When you create a different font for each regional variant (or cram
> different fonts in a TTC file) you hide the language selection problem
> by making the font selector a kind of language selector.  That sucks
> and is massively user-unfriendly but complex script users are so happy
> to have *something* they do not grumble at app authors much (they
> should).
I agree with you.
 
> But anyway, creating fonts is difficult enough without workarounding
> application bugs. Please focus on creating good OpenType fonts and let
> application authors take care of their own mess.
Until they are not used correctly, good fonts are kind of useless. But I
understand your point since this mailing list is only about fonts.
-- 
Bernard Massot