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

[pravin.d.s at gmail.com]

On 20 February 2012 08:45, Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

By looking at it, looks like new ligature will conflict with the existing
Lohit Tamil rendering. Yes, "Lohit Tamil Classical" looks good to me.  I
will check and do release of it.

Do report bug against Lohit Tamil in Fedora  with the new .sfd fie.


>
> 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.
>

No props will do. It will be good to have both under same repo. So if any
changes happening in Lohit Tamil i can reflect those in variant as well.

Best Regards,
Pravin Satpute
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