Re: [Freebangfont-devel] k.ss.na or k.ss.nna ?

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On Friday 20 August 2004 07:49, TAKAHASHI Naoto wrote:
> Thank you for providing great Bangla fonts.
>
> We are researchers working at a national institute in Japan. We have
> been developing a software library to multilingualise Unix/Linux
> software.  Our library helps writing application programs that need
> to display/input/edit various languages and scripts including, of
> course, Bangla.
>
>   http://www.m17n.org/m17n-lib/
>
> We have tested our rendering algorithm using the MuktiNarrow.ttf and
> LikhanNormal.otf fonts, and found a inconsistency in ligature
> formation.
>
> MuktiNarrow.ttf generates a ligature from the three consonants:
>   KA(U+0995)  SSA(U+09B7)  NA(U+09A8)
>
> LikhanNormal.otf, on the other hand, generates a very similar
> ligature from the following combination:
>   KA(U+0995)  SSA(U+09B7)  NNA(U+09A3)
>
> Only the last consonats differ each other.
>
> I consulted a linguistic encyclopedia.  It says KA+SSA+NA generates a
> ligature.  (Mukti got one point.)

What encyclopaedia is that?

> I also consulted backnumbers of the TDIL Newsletter.  It says
> KA+SSA+NNA generates a ligature.  (Likhan got one points.)
>
> Frankly speaking, I am confused.  Would you kindly shed us a light?
>
> (Both fonts generate the same ligature from KA+SSA+MA, by the way.)

I'm fairly confident that the KA+SSA+NA combination is illegal according 
to the rules of Bengali grammer. Of course, that doesn't stop people 
from using that combination when writing (there's nothing in unicode 
preventing them) -- most likely resulting in an incorrectly spelled 
word. 

If you restrict yourself to correctly spelled words, there are several 
words with KA+SSA+NNA and none with KA+SSA+NA. So it makes more sense 
to have KA+SSA+NNA. I'm pretty sure the assignment in Mukti was a 
mistake.

> Another question: I have been unable to find a Bangla opentype font
> that supports not only Bangla but also Assamese.  Since the number of
> additional characters are very small (only two, if I remember
> correctly), it should not be difficult for font developers to add
> Assamese support.  Do you have any plan to do so, or are there any
> such fonts?

Could you be more specific? As far as I know, the codepoints needed for 
Assamese are 09F0 and 09F1, which are present in both Mukti and Likhan. 
Are you looking for ligatures involving these characters? If so, it's 
unlikely that we'll be able to help, since we (at least I) have no idea 
how they form ligatures. (We'll be happy to help someone who does.)

Hope that helps,

Deepayan