Peter,

My guru in all things Hindi fonts tells me that the problem lies at the level 
where encodings are converted into font renderings. Apparently, र् ट is a 
perfectly correct alternate rendering of the unicode, just not Correct (with a 
capital C). I have no idea where this happens with MapServer. Thankfully I've 
never had to create a map with Hindi labels (I would be curious to learn, 
perhaps off-list, who wants to see maps with Hindi labels), but I too would 
like to see this resolved.

Hope someone knowledgable chimes in.


On Jan 23, 2013, at 3:58 PM, "Mr. Puneet Kishor" <[email protected]> wrote:

> (adding the list back to cc so brains better than mine may help)
> 
> 
> On Jan 23, 2013, at 3:47 PM, "Peter Mallen" <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Puneet,
>> 
>> I have passed the codes you have provided into MapServer  (U+0930 U+094D 
>> U+091F ) and it displays the characters separately, not as one character.
>> 
>> This is how Map Server displays it: र् ट
> 
> 
> 
> hmmm... well, then this is definitely above my pay grade. Seems like you are 
> doing the right thing, but my guess is MapServer's Unicode implementation is 
> not working properly.
> 
> I don't see any mention of Unicode on mapserver docs page. The only 
> potentially relevant bit I see is  
> (http://www.mapserver.org/installation/unix.html#obtaining-the-necessary-software)
>  that libgd should be compiled against the iconv library which provides full 
> support for Unicode. On my MBA I get
> 
>    $ ~ > gdlib-config --libs
>    -lXpm -lX11 -ljpeg -lfontconfig -lfreetype -lpng -lz -liconv
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Thank You,
>> 
>> Peter Mallen
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mr. Puneet Kishor [mailto:[email protected]] 
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 3:36 PM
>> To: Peter Mallen
>> Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Rendering Hindi Characters
>> 
>> 
>> On Jan 23, 2013, at 3:00 PM, "Peter Mallen" <[email protected]> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Puneet,
>>> 
>>> I did try feeding MapServer the correct Unicode characters, and it did fix 
>>> the characters using what I believe is called the "Reph" symbol (ि) but I 
>>> could not get the conjunct consonants to display correctly.
>> 
>> 
>> I have no idea what the above means ;-), but, did you try passing U+0930 
>> U+094D U+091F to MapServer? See http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0900.pdf
>> 
>> 
>> U+0930 -> र -> r
>> U+094D ->  ् -> "halves" the previously typed r 091F -> ट -> thick t 
>> U+sound
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Also, I have posted on the fribidi list and I believe it does only help 
>>> with bidirectional languages, but I could be wrong.
>>> 
>>> Thank You,
>>> 
>>> Peter Mallen
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: [email protected] 
>>> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mr. 
>>> Puneet Kishor
>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 12:27 PM
>>> To: [email protected]
>>> Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Rendering Hindi Characters
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Jan 23, 2013, at 12:17 PM, Stephen Woodbridge <[email protected]> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 1/23/2013 2:20 PM, Peter Mallen wrote:
>>>>> Hello Everyone,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am having issues rendering certain Hindi characters. I am using
>>>>> UTF-8 encoding.
>>>>> 
>>>>> When attempting to display the following Hindi character in
>>>>> MapServer: र्ट
>>>>> 
>>>>> It is rendered in MapServer as the following two characters: र् ट
>>>>> 
>>>>> I believe these characters form what is called a conjunct consonant, 
>>>>> of which there appear to be thousands of and most of them do not 
>>>>> render using MapServer.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Also, It appears that MapServer is having an issue displaying these 
>>>>> conjunct consonants and wants to display these characters separately 
>>>>> rather than to form them as one combined character.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here is a link describing more about the Devanagari alphabet:
>>>>> http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can anyone please help with this?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thank You,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Peter Mallen
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Peter,
>>>> 
>>>> I can not speak to this specific problem but I can give you and overview. 
>>>> Mapserver uses fribidi library for rending this data and I know from 
>>>> working with Arabic that a lot depends on the font you are using, in 
>>>> additional to the capabilities and version of fribidi library.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Isn't fribidi specifically for bidirectional languages? Hindi is strictly 
>>> LTR.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> This kind of question is probably best asked on the fribidi list as they 
>>>> will know more about what is supported or not for any given language and 
>>>> they might be able to point you to a better font.
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.fribidi.org/
>>>> 
>>>> You should probably make sure you are using a recent version of the 
>>>> library like 0.19.2 or better and be aware the 0.19.5 was released in Dec 
>>>> 2012.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Peter, I forget where you and I left our off-list conversation re. the 
>>> issues you were having with rendering Devnagari. Did you try feeding 
>>> MapServer the correct Unicode characters?
>>> 
>>> Hope you figure this out.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Puneet Kishor
>> 
> 

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