[Lohit-devel-list] Request for help on classical style Lohit Tamil font

[Shriramana Sharma]

Hello people. I have using the Lohit Tamil font (among other Lohit fonts)
for quite some time and like it very much.

We would however like to add the classical style written forms for ணா னா றா
(also seen in the right part of ணொ னொ றொ ணோ னோ றோ) and of ணை னை லை ளை to
the font. This classical style has been documented in the Unicode chapter
on Tamil: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/ch09.pdf p 300 and
301 (in the book, not of the PDF) under the name of "Ligatures with -aa in
Traditional Tamil Orthography" and "Ligatures with -ai in Traditional Tamil
Orthography".

So far we are aware of only one Unicode Tamil font which supports it,
e-Tamil OTC by Elmar Kniprath from
http://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/indtib/INDOLIPI/Indolipi.htm (
http://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/indtib/INDOLIPI/Tamil.zip). You can check how
that font renders the text: ணா னா றா / ணொ னொ றொ / ணோ னோ றோ / ணை னை லை ளை.
However we especially like the visual style of Lohit Tamil so we wanted to
do a classical style Tamil font based on Lohit Tamil.

Basically this requires four extra glyphs for ணா னா றா and the ligating
vowel sign -AI which we call "elephant's trunk" due to the resemblance. By
carefully crafting the metrics of the elephant's trunk and writing tables
to replace the regular vowel sign -AI ை by this glyph when it occurs before
(i.e. after reordering) ண ன ல ள, the desired output can be achieved as seen
in the PDF. Elmar Kniprath's font also has done the same thing.

Now we have designed the extra glyphs and put it at the end of the Lohit
Tamil (v2.5.0) font (renamed to Lohit Tamil Classical) and assigned PUA
codepoints for convenience for now.

I however request the help of you people in creating the appropriate OT
table entries to make this rendering possible.

Of course, you can take these glyphs as our contribution to the Lohit
project under the OFL if you would like to release a separate Lohit Tamil
Classical font.

Even if you do not wish to maintain such a font, it would be most kind of
you if you could help us adding the required OT table entries. If you would
prefer that we remove the name Lohit from such a separately released
modified font (as per the OFL) we can do so.

-- 
Shriramana Sharma
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