Re: Lanna fonts --unicode

Bhante Dhammanando,

> I have now inspected the Lanna fonts that I mentioned in a
> previous post. They turn out not to be so useful after all.
> I assume they must be intended chiefly for those working
> with texts in the Lanna language...

This has been a big problem with computing in any/all of the Mon & Pyu
derived scripts: even with "Lao-Dhamma" the script is used in such a
radically different way to express the vernacular, that almost none of the
existing fonts can be used for Pali ... at the very least a separate
keylayout is required.  Naturally, frustration with Burmese fonts that can't
properly input Pali are widespread for similar reasons.  With Lanna, I would
expect that subscript + vowel combinations would involve confusion similar
to what I find with Lao-Dhamma.  Really, Lanna and Lao-Dhamma are very, very
closely related.

There are similar issues in ensuring that a classical literary Sinhalese
font can properly express Pali, etc. etc. --thus, the process of e-mailing
requests for amendments to the programmers at Xenotypetech.com has been very
prolix over the past year!  But, as I say, I can vouch that their current
Sinhala & Burmese really do work for Pali --and when they get around to
Lanna, I'll be able to vouch for their work in that respect, too.

E.M.


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