Unicode 5.1 compatible fonts for Malayalam not available

[praveenp]

Binary package hint: ttf-malayalam-fonts

No default fonts for Malayalam Language bundled with ubuntu supporting Unicode 5.1 standard.

http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#Malayalam_Chillu_Characters

# hardy (x11): Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
1:0.5.0-0ubuntu1: all
# intrepid (x11): Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
1:0.5.4ubuntu2: all
# jaunty (x11): Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
1:0.5.4ubuntu2: all
# karmic (x11): Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
1:0.5.4ubuntu2: all
# lucid (x11): Free TrueType fonts for the Malayalam language
1:0.5.4ubuntu2: all

This looks weird. There is no change defined after intrepid. Not even for Lucid.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Praveen Prakash wrote:
> No default fonts for Malayalam Language bundled with ubuntu supporting
> Unicode 5.1 standard.

Are the fonts available in the latest upstream package on debian
already? And if yes, which font would you recommend?

[praveenp (praveenp)]

>And if yes, which font would you recommend?

http://malayalam.homelinux.net/evuraan/Unicode-5_1_0/

These altered fonts just works fine.

[Anivar Aravind (anivar)]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Arne Goetje <email address hidden> wrote:
> Praveen Prakash wrote:
>> No default fonts for Malayalam Language bundled with ubuntu supporting
>> Unicode 5.1 standard.
>
> Are the fonts available in the latest upstream package on debian
> already? And if yes, which font would you recommend?
>

Upstream Developers (Swathanthra malayalam Computing
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/smc) decided to stick on with
Unicode 5.0 standard due to the new issues introduced with Unicode 5.1
Onwards .

No fonts fully supports Unicode 5.1 or later as of now. The Forks of
SMC fonts pointed by Praveen Prakash is not fully unicode 5.1
Compatible. It just uses the code positions of Malayalam Chillus.

Lohit Malayalam Have partial 5.1 Support. But it is not fully 5.1 compatible
I request to stick with Unicode 5.0 for malayalam, as of Debian &
Fedora till fully unicode 5.1 fonts are released

Anivar Aravind

[praveenp (praveenp)]

No operating system like ubuntu is for "UPSTREAM DEVELOPERS". Common Ubuntu end user (or fedora or debian or whatever SMC maintain) always getting difficulties when they use Malayalam Language. Altered fonts are not defined some glyphs because remaining unicode 5.1 code points need explicit OS support and that is not available(? I don't know, I am just a user). If so "UPSTREAM DEVELOPERS" are responsible for creating that also. This looks like somekind of Chicken or the egg dilemma.

Actually I found a bug for this in Fedora, dated one year before, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=484536 but someone has blocked intelligently the further development. And now projecting Fedora also not Unicode 5.1 compatible.

Still bug #1 remains large and ubuntu users are not able to read Malayalam stresslessly is not a good situation for Ubuntu.

Currently all default fonts giving Ⓡ R in circle for unicode 5.1 values. Does that mean Developers knew the problem?

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Anivar Aravind wrote:
>
> Upstream Developers (Swathanthra malayalam Computing
> http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/smc) decided to stick on with
> Unicode 5.0 standard due to the new issues introduced with Unicode 5.1
> Onwards .
>
> No fonts fully supports Unicode 5.1 or later as of now. The Forks of
> SMC fonts pointed by Praveen Prakash is not fully unicode 5.1
> Compatible. It just uses the code positions of Malayalam Chillus.
>
> Lohit Malayalam Have partial 5.1 Support. But it is not fully 5.1 compatible
> I request to stick with Unicode 5.0 for malayalam, as of Debian &
> Fedora till fully unicode 5.1 fonts are released

Anivar,

could you point me to some discussions with the issues of Malayalam in
Unicode 5.1 or 5.2? Is it only fonts lacking support for characters or
are there other problems involved?

Thanks

[Cibu CJ (cibucj)]

Windows 7 now supports Chillu letters defined in Unicode 5.1. I wish Ubuntu also upgrade its Malayalam fonts to display them. Today, there is lot of user content using these Chillu letters (U+0D7A..U+0D7F).

[Santhosh Thottingal (santhosh-thottingal)]

The reason why developers are not including the new characters and encoding changes are explained in the bug report : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=484536 . Note that just adding these 'chillu characters" will not make the font unicode 5.1 or 5.2 compliant. There are few other changes also in unicode 5.1. Font developers from the community are not interested in incorporating these controversial changes.

But the ubuntu package for ttf-indic-fonts requires updates since there were new releases of this package during August 2009. Current debian version is 0.5.6 (http://packages.debian.org/sid/ttf-indic-fonts)

[praveenp (praveenp)]

That may be a point of view. In a new user point of view, reconfiguring is very difficult. Windows is very available in India and most of the people using them. Windows tools for typing Malayalam is well updated and Now majority of data coming encoded in Unicode 5.1.

Current stand of developers cannot provide any advantage on ubuntu usability.

Enough arguments were done on this, and in reality unicode 5.1 released 2 years before (Please consider current unicode version is 5.2).

[praveenp (praveenp)]

Largest Malayalam data storage, wikimedia Malayalam wikies going to switch its database to unicode 5.1.

Old encoding has another problem. Almost every search engines omits the joiner in old encoding. This is true for google, yahoo, wikipedia and all the other sites I have checked.

Santhosh, ttf-indic-fonts 0.5.6 change (for Malayalam) just removes these "circled R" from Unicode 5.1 code points, Right?

[praveenp (praveenp)]

If anybody believes that this problem is not important, pls check Malayalam Wikipedia Mainpage ScreenShot.

[praveenp (praveenp)]

Any updates?

[praveenp (praveenp)]

Its a shame, Unicode's page mentioning this change was last updated on Wednesday 17 December 2008. But still, even in Lucid Lynx, there has no compatible fonts. If somebody check "Screenshot (Lucid Lynx) of Malayalam Wikipedia (ml.wikipedia.org)", they can feel the problem. Or check Malayalam wikipedia or most of the Malayalam sites.

For the sake of perfect ten, somebody fix this please

[praveenp (praveenp)]

FYI updated fonts available here: https://github.com/junaidpv/Malayalam-Fonts

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Santhosh Thottingal (santhosh-thottingal)]

Upstream had released latest version of font and had addressed this. Please use http://packages.debian.org/sid/fonts-smc , Package: fonts-smc (5.0-1)

Note that ttf-malayalam-fonts is getting removed from Debian , it is renamed to fonts-smc. Same is the case for all font packages in ttf-indic-fonts