Re: [unifont] Unicode (sanskrit) width problem

[Hadrien Lacour]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 06:50:10PM -0700, Paul Hardy wrote:
> Hadrien,
> 
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Hadrien Lacour
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 08:26:13PM -0700, Paul Hardy wrote:
> > > Hadrien,
> > >
> > > On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Hadrien Lacour <
> > > address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > > here's a strange problem I'm encountering with Unifont and Sanskrit:
> > > > https://files.catbox.moe/q6c3mj.webm
> > > >
> >
> > I tried with the PCF font (xterm -fn '-*-unifont-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'),
> > and the problems are even more pronounced.
> >
> > ...
> 
> 
> I think this is approximately what you typed:
> 
> सहा र रࣳवव काा  लऻौ
> 
> 
> In an xterm window, I saw similar behavior highlighting the TrueType
> version under Debian (I don't have a running Gentoo system), but when
> I highlighted over it again the final character came back.  There was
> no spurious dot though.  in LibreOffice, that did not happen at all.
> It might just be that xterm does not highlight combining characters
> correctly.
> 
> However, if you are going to use Sanskrit (or any modern Indic
> language, etc.), I recommend you use a TrueType font that has
> character combinations (ligatures) encoded.  Pairs or even triplets of
> letters will change shape when combined with each other.  Unifont only
> encodes one glyph per code point, and is only intended as a font of
> last resort.  It does not have support for extra glyphs to encode
> ligature combinations.
> 
> There is a Sanskrit font from Omkarananda Ashram in India that is free
> in the sense that it doesn't cost anything, and free in the sense that
> there are no restrictions on its use, but there aren't explicit
> permissions (or restrictions for that matter) to modify the font to
> your liking.  If you ever did find a change that needed to be made
> though, you should probably send them any modifications you make as
> suggestions.  Here is a short blurb on the font on a University of
> Chicago website, with a sample of the font:
> 
> http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/available/sanskrit/sanskrit2003.shtml
> 
> You can see ligatures in the font that Unifont does not have the
> capability to support, and observe how much nicer it looks than the
> bitmap-patterned Unifont.
> 
> There are probably other free Devanagari (Hindi/Sanskrit) fonts that
> are "free" in both senses of the word, but I am not familiar with
> them.
> 
> Is using such a TrueType font with more complete encoding than Unifont
> supports an option for you?
> 
> 
> Paul

Thanks for analyzing my problem. I think I'll live with it since it's only use
for one album in my music collection, and nothing more.