---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Steve White <stevan.wh...@googlemail.com> Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:11 PM Subject: Re: [Freefont-bugs] Placement of khirik-yud for Yiddish in FreeSans To: Ze'ev Clementson <zeevc...@gmail.com>
Hi Ze'ev, This is a bug in FreeSans. The history of it, near as I can piece together: I personally put in the feature tables for Hebrew, saw the need for positioning regarding these letters, made a release. Then sombody pointed out Hebrew wasn't working right, and I made a quick fix of disabling the Yiddish positioniing. There it stands. It would be expeditious for you to open a proper bug report at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=freefont where we can effectively track progress. I also need: 1) a bit of actual Unicode text showing the issue 2) to know which OS and version you're using 3) to know which application software you're using. I'll take care of it as soon as I can, given this info. Thanks for writing! On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 6:23 PM, Ze'ev Clementson <zeevc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I have been using the FreeSans font in an application that displays > Yiddish text using Unicode combining characters. In Yiddish, for the > "pasekh tsvey yudn" and "khirik yud" character combinations, the > convention is to "raise" the vowel. This is done for Yiddish only, not > Hebrew. With FreeSans, "pasekh tsvey yudn" is displayed properly; > however, "khirik yud" is not. I looked through the source code of > FreeSans.sfd to try to determine why this was happening and saw that > there was a yodhiriqhebrew ("khirik yud") definition set up; however, > it was not being displayed. The yodyodpatahhebrew ("pasekh tsvey > yudn") definition was being displayed properly so I looked through the > source to see why it was being displayed and the yodhiriqhebrew > combination was not. > > First, since "pasekh tsvey yudn" is displaying with a raised vowel, I > looked at the definition for it in the font source: > > StartChar: yodyodpatahhebrew > Encoding: 64287 64287 1299 > Width: 400 > Flags: HMW > LayerCount: 2 > Fore > Refer: 853 1463 S 1 0 0 1 -99 280 2 > Refer: 2821 1522 S 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 > Validated: 32769 > Ligature2: "'ccmp' Glyph Composition/Decomposition in Yiddish" > yodyodhebrew patahhebrew > LCarets2: 1 0 > Ligature2: "'liga' Standard Ligatures in Hebrew subtable" yodyodhebrew > patahhebrew > EndChar > > I noted that the "Ligature2" element has two separate definitions for > ccmp & liga. > > Then, I looked for the definition of "khirik yud" in the source: > > StartChar: yodhiriqhebrew > Encoding: 64285 64285 1297 > Width: 200 > Flags: HMW > LayerCount: 2 > Fore > Refer: 875 1497 N 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 > Refer: 850 1460 N 1 0 0 1 -203 278 2 > Validated: 32769 > Ligature2: "'ccmp' Glyph Composition/Decomposition in Yiddish" > yodhebrew hiriqhebrew > EndChar > > The "Ligature2" element had only one definition for ccmp. > > So, I used FontForge to add the Ligature2 liga reference: > > StartChar: yodhiriqhebrew > Encoding: 64285 64285 1297 > Width: 200 > Flags: HMW > LayerCount: 2 > Fore > Refer: 875 1497 N 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 > Refer: 850 1460 N 1 0 0 1 -203 278 2 > Validated: 32769 > Ligature2: "'liga' Standard Ligatures in Hebrew subtable" yodhebrew > hiriqhebrew > Ligature2: "'ccmp' Glyph Composition/Decomposition in Yiddish" > yodhebrew hiriqhebrew > EndChar > > Now, for both "pasekh tsvey yudn" and "khirik yud" combinations, the > vowels are raised. So, for Yiddish-only, this modification works fine > and the mod could potentially be incorporated into the font. > Unfortunately, the vowels are raised regardless of whether I display > Hebrew text (the vowels shouldn't be raised for Hebrew) with an HTML > xml:lang="he" lang="he" or Yiddish text (the vowels should be raised > for Yiddish) with an HTML xml:lang="yi" lang="yi". > > So, my question is: how is it possible to specify that the "pasekh > tsvey yudn" and "khirik yud" combinations will be used with raised > vowels for Yiddish but without raised vowels for Hebrew? Is this a bug > in the font definition or do I need to do something else in my HTML > code to correctly indicate whether the font should use the 'liga' > lookup definitions? > > - Ze'ev >
