[Lohit-devel-list] Need information regarding Samvruthokaram ligature in Malayalam fonts

[Rahul Bhalerao]

As per my own records and the recommendations I had proposed for Indic
rendering fixes, the issue of samvruthokaram had more to do with the
rendering engine than the font itself. The recommendations can be found
here:
http://rbhalera.fedorapeople.org/Documents/RenderingRecommendations-up.html#3.
Malayalam|region

The original issue was as follows:
 - The 'samvruthokaram' syllable in malayalam is actually a half vowel
which is formed by vowel 'U' (Unicode 0D41) followed by the halanth
character in malayalam.
 - Since halanth is by default allowed only after a consonant, the sequence
for samvruthokaram was yielding a dotted circle in between
 - Hence it was necessary to amend the rendering engine to allow this
sequence

There is a long discussion on this and few other issues on the old bug at:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=242016

Regarding the shape of the syllable, there seem to be practices, one of
which includes using chillu character shape.
"transliterated as *ŭ* (for example, ന *na* → ന് *nŭ*). Optionally, a vowel
sign *u* is inserted, as in നു് (= ന +  ു +  ്). "
- wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_alphabet

You may find more details in:
http://varamozhi.blogspot.in/2005_06_01_archive.html
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2005/05210-malayalam.pdf

As far the shape of the glyph in Lohit font is concerned, once the
rendering engine issue of dotted circle was resolved, the shape of the
ligature for samvruthokaram was changed on the request of Ani Peter. I am
not able to find the old bug in bugzilla but remember that the particular
ligature was added on request from Ani. May be Ani can give some linguistic
justification for the particular shape which I am not aware of.

Regards,
Rahul.


On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 9:21 PM, pravin.d.s at gmail.com
<pravin.d.s at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi All,
>
>    During discussing on query from Shriramana (in cc), we found that
> existing ligature of Samvruthokaram (പാലു) is bit different from accepted.
>
>    It was committed by Rahul Bhalerao (in cc) long time back, but
> unfortunately there is no reference for this change in commit log. [1]
>
>   So before reverting this change, i would like to know if there is any
> reference or attestation available for same.
>
>   Attached Image: Top image showing existing rendering for പാലു and bottom
> image shows expected rendering of Samvruthokaram.
>
> Best Regards,
> Pravin Satpute
>
>
> 1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1013183#c1
>
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