mainUnifont - Support: sr #109641, Request a redraw for Phags Pa,...

 
 

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sr #109641: Request a redraw for Phags Pa, please.

Submitter:  Daryl Rhoades <gilgalad>
Submitted:  Thu 31 Jan 2019 11:02:45 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  3 - Normal Status:  Done
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  unifoundry
Open/Closed:  Closed Operating System:  None

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Tue 05 Mar 2019 10:25:56 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Daryl,

Rotated Phags-pa and Mongolian glyphs are available in ".hex" form in the full Unifont package tarball.  They are located in the directory font/plane00/alt.  Using them will require you to substitute the corresponding glyphs in font/plane00/unifont-base.hex and building a custom font yourself.  I cannot make them the default, because the Unicode Standard orientation is the default orientation.

With this addition, I am closing this request.  I hope you are able to use these glyphs.

Thank you,


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Mon 11 Feb 2019 06:04:06 AM UTC, comment #5: 

Daryl,

You are the only one who has told me that you are using the Unifont Phags Pa script, so I would like your input on this.

The proposed Unicode 12.0.0 Phags Pa glyphs use a font that is more of a block style than the pre-12.0.0 font.  It would be easier to render in Unifont because of Unifont's low resolution.

However, I do not wish to redraw the earlier pre-rotation glyphs.

So what would be better for you, for me to leave the Phags Pa glyphs as they are in their current script, unless I someday want to also redo the pre-rotation version?

Just to clarify also, you mentioned my "fixing" the Unifont Phags Pa glyphs.  I need to keep them rotated as they are in the Unicode spec.  I can, however, after the Unifont 12.0.01 release, add the old pre-rotation glyphs to the font/plane00/alt directory.  For the Unifont 12.0.01 release, I want to make minimal changes to the package contents compared to Unifont 11.0.03.

Thank you,


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Sat 02 Feb 2019 04:04:17 PM UTC, comment #4: 

Thanks a lot, much appreciated for sure.

The thing is that the Phags Pa script rendering is not completely controlled by the browser but by user code. It would be simple to remove that code and the problem will be solved.

For example, on the Wikipedia page for Phags Pa, the code is turned by CSS styling. If this font is ever fixed, I could edit that page myself to correct the problem.

<td><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%96%91" class="extiw" title="wikt:疑">疑</a> yí</td>
<td><span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">*[ŋ]</span></td>
<td><span style="display:inline-block; font-family:&#39;BabelStone Phags-pa Book&#39;, &#39;Microsoft PhagsPa&#39;, &#39;Noto Sans Phags Pa&#39;; font-size: 12px; line-height:1.5em; -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-lr; -o-writing-mode: vertical-lr; -ms-writing-mode: tb-lr; writing-mode: tb-lr; writing-mode: vertical-lr; vertical-align:text-top;" title="nga">ꡃ</span></td>

This is all user defined code that turns the character. That's why my keyboard has the characters sideways because there is no code to turn it for a default setting.

Daryl Rhoades <gilgalad>
Sat 02 Feb 2019 03:23:51 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Daryl,

Okay, I will plan for the Unifont release following the Unifont 12.0.01 release (which I expect to produce in March) to have the pre-rotation Mongolian and Phags Pa glyphs.

Even if you do create a font with those pre-rotation glyphs, your biggest challenge will be an uncooperative font rendering engine that doesn't realize they are vertical glyphs.  You'll somehow have to work outside of that constraint within a web page.

I'll keep you posted.

Take care,


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Fri 01 Feb 2019 10:44:45 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Apologies for not being prompt at times. This is been a fun but frustrating project at times because it's been a struggle to figure out a way to organize alphabetically and dealing with technical issues, many of which you know about. Truth is, you've been the most helpful. Other places I could get no cooperation at all. I even got a reply "I didn't read all of your post or look at your links but you could just use a different font." I completely ignored that. I'm not like that all the time.

I understand what you mean with the rendering issues for Phags Pa, the browsers will support the standard in the same way. I guess I will have to live with it. What I have done is decided to make a keyboard for Phags Pa which is on my Chinese page at the bottom. Perhaps after they see it in action, they might understand better. It's understandable to me because these sets haven't been used in the way that I am now.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Chinese.html

As far as placing the 8.0.01 glyphs for Phags Pa in the directory would be great. It's possible that I might make a font some day in the future, the way yours is designed could help me design my own. One of my goals are to make a monogram set for Roman Imperial, Byzantine Empire and ancient Greek coins like Ptolemy Tetradrachms.

I think the Kharosthi problem is more browser related but I was hoping that you had a solution for that issue. I added every character in the basic Abugida alpha syllabify set with a unicode utility. If this issue is not fixed then the work-around will suffice.

I'm also trying to keep using the major fonts on the keyboard so it's simpler and easier to use for my friends in the ancient coin community. Many are very new to reading coins and some are in the beginner stages of using operating systems.


Daryl Rhoades <gilgalad>
Fri 01 Feb 2019 04:59:48 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Daryl,

The issue with Phags-Pa and Mongolian has some rendering complications.  The Unicode Consortium decided at one point to rotate both scripts to facilitate writing excerpts as part of documents that mainly use horizontal scripts. For example, see Figure 3 in Section 3.3 of this document:

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr50/

I did not rotate the Phags-Pa or Mongolian scripts until the Unifont 9.0.01 release, so Unifont 8.0.01 and earlier should have those glyphs in the orientation you want:

https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-8.0.01/

There is a further complication though: current font rendering engines will expect to render those glyphs horizontally from left to right to match the current Unicode Standard, not vertically, regardless of which font you use.  I don't know that there is an easy way around that.

There is one thing I can do that may help you.  In the future, I can take the original pre-rotation Mongolian and Phags-Pa glyphs and place them in the font/plane00/alt directory (which I created to hold quad-width Chinese ideographs that I drew, subsequently replaced by double-width versions).  Then someone who wanted (such as yourself) could use those glyphs to replace the default glyphs.  I would not want to support such a hybrid font though; one Unifont TrueType font set across two Unicode planes is already large and complicated enough.  Someone else would have to build it.  That still would not solve the font rendering engine problem of wanting to arrange those glyphs horizontally though.

The Kharosthi message you submitted is here:

https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?109546

I closed it after a few months of not receiving further feedback from you.  With Unifont's limitations, I cannot add glyphs to a script that are not part of the Unicode Standard, or have special syllable combinations for various letter combinations.  For that reason, I do not consider Unifont suitable for any Indic-type script (Devanagari, etc.); it is a font of last resort.  The persons I referred you to in that thread who are pursuing getting Karosthi glyphs in Unicode are definitely the best contacts for adding missing glyphs to the Unicode Standard.

I know that as with Karosthi, this response does not really solve your problem.  I am working within the constraints of the current Unicode Standard, combined with the constraints of Unifont being a simple one glyph per code point font.  You really do need a proper Phags-Pa font, Karosthi font, etc. (ideally a full OpenType font), but I have not researched alternative sources of those beyond Unifont.

Best wishes,


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Thu 31 Jan 2019 11:02:45 PM UTC, original submission:  

Hello again, I posted here before for my Ancient Coin Visual Keyboard.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Greek-Latin.html

I would like a redraw of Phags Pa because it has a major problem. The characters are written as they would have been in the ancient days. And then you turn the piece of paper to turn the characters vertical and upright as they appear.

The problem with this is that you have to write some code to turn the characters. They will still be copied and pasted the wrong way because the clipboard can't be modified to turn the character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Phags-pa_script

The tombstone photo has the characters right. There are many coins the same way. Some Chinese coins also display the characters upright. Here are a bunch from Zeno.ru - Oriental Coins Database.

https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=601

I hope you can do a redraw in the future when you have time or when you feel like it. No rush but please I'd appreciate it. Or this script can not be used because those wrongly displayed characters will be all over the internet and no one wants this that I know of.

I also discussed Kharoshti with you the last time. I ended up displaying every character in a table which is a lot of work. I hope you can fix that too because it's incomplete and the dependent vowels will not modify a consonant as it should. Both of the font sets you made for Brahmi and Sharada function absolutely right. Kharosthi should work the same way.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Khar-Greek-Latin.html

Here is Brahmi which has correctly functioning dependent vowels.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Brahmi-Greek-Latin.html

And Sharada.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Sharada-Greek-Latin.html

Thanks again and I appreciated your assistance the last time as well.



Daryl Rhoades <gilgalad>

 

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    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2019-03-05 unifoundry StatusIn Progress Done
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2019-02-02 unifoundry StatusNone In Progress
        Assigned toNone unifoundry

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