Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - Font related bug, unresolved

On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 02:08 +0100, Skywalker wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I''ve been using linux for a while and have been unable to use
''dhivehi'' fonts
> or ''thaana script'' in any linux distro. Problem appears
to be that X does not
> have a suitable keymap for dhivehi fonts. 
> 
> On the other hand, on most mircsoft applications, people who use thaana
script
> (in the Maldives) can use most of the word processing applications amongst 
> others. Regarding this i have posted a bug 3176 
> (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3716) on 2005-07-06 and have 
> not recieved a reply yet.
> 
> Keeping in mind that the developers must be really be busy, I''d
like to know
> what else I can do to bring this issue to the attention of the developers.
I don''t think this has anything to do with fontconfig ... fontconfig
should be able to handle Thaana fonts without any changes.

You''ll get a bit better support from fontconfig if you add a Divehi 
"orthography" to fontconfig .. adding a file div.orth to
fontconfig/fc-lang with the appropriate Unicode ranges.

But that''s a lot more important for languages that use a variant of
a different script. For a language like Divehi that has an unque
script, it won''t matter much.

Though I think you could get OK rendering of Thaana without any special
rendering support, to fully support OpenType Thaana fonts, you would
need support in the rendering layer: for instance a Pango module.

See:

 http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenType%20Dev/thaana/intro.mspx

For what needs to be supported. This wouldn''t be a very hard module
to write, and you could ask for volunteers on gtk-i18n-list@gnome.org

Are the freely distributable Thaana fonts available?

The question of X keyboard maps is a messy one, and I''m not really
in a position to help you here. What might help in convincing someone
to help you with that would be a pointer to a Divehi keyboard layout
and information as to exactly how input works.

Regards,
						Owen

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> Are the freely distributable Thaana fonts available?
There is the Thaana Unicode Akeh font:

   http://www.mitf.net/index.php/projects/thaana/font-unicode.html

which is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
> The question of X keyboard maps is a messy one, and I''m not
> really in a position to help you here.
The M17n library

   http://www.m17n.org/

includes a Thaana input method.  I tried it through the M17n-SCIM
bridge on Ubuntu 5.04, and it seems to work very well.

Stefan

-- 
Stefan Baums
Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington

Hi,

I''ve been using linux for a while and have been unable to use
''dhivehi'' fonts
or ''thaana script'' in any linux distro. Problem appears to be
that X does not
have a suitable keymap for dhivehi fonts. 

On the other hand, on most mircsoft applications, people who use thaana script 
(in the Maldives) can use most of the word processing applications amongst 
others. Regarding this i have posted a bug 3176 
(https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3716) on 2005-07-06 and have 
not recieved a reply yet.

Keeping in mind that the developers must be really be busy, I''d like to
know
what else I can do to bring this issue to the attention of the developers.

Thanking you,
Askholia