Thank you for your comments. I am not going to attempt to produce the list of ligatures myself.
I am writing the paper to draw attention to the problem which exists in relation to the DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform) system of interactive broadcasting and its application to the languages of the Indian subcontinent and hopefully provide a software format for resolving it.. It appears that the software requirement is essentially as follows, if one wishes to use a font-based method of display with an ordinary font. ---- Receive a stream of input characters encoded in regular Unicode UTF-16 format suitable for processing as Java char items. Output a local stream of Java char suitable to be used in a Java drawString method with an ordinary font. ---- As far as I can tell at present, the eutocode typography file format could be used to produce char codes for conjunct forms and for dealing with matras by scanning whole words, in that the changes needed seem always to be within a word and that there is no carry over to a following word. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast03300.htm The discussion has led me to believe that it would be helpful for me to add an additional possibility to a eutocode typography file, using two presently unallocated codes. I have not yet finally decided which particular two yet, nor finalized their definitions, as I am open to any suggestions for improvement, yet here is the idea. For the moment I refer to them as U+EBEX and U+EBEY. A line in a eutocode typography file could have a line as follows. sequence1 U+EBEX sequence2 U+EBEY sequence3 The spaces in the above line are for setting out the line clearly here, in use the spaces would not be there. Such a line would have the meaning as follows. Carry out the replacement sequence2 U+EBEF sequence3 if and only if sequence1 matches the sequence stored in the language choice string. The sequence1 sequence is expressed using none or more characters from the range U+0020 to U+007E and is the decoded result of the latest use of a sequence of plane 14 language tags. The idea is that the plane 14 tags would be used to signal particular languages, represented as in international standards, though the eutocode typography file will only define "a sequence" as such, not compliance with any list of languages. Would this be sufficient to provide a way to guide a Java program to produce an output stream of Java char to use to access an ordinary font in order to render languages of the Indian subcontinent, provided that a eutocode typography file and a font were supplied? I recognize that the preparing of the eutocode typography file and the ordinary font containing the glyphs is a large task and I am not going to try to do it myself. However, if I can publish a software format which has the capability to solve the problem and can draw attention to the need to prepare the list and to prepare fonts which implement the list in part or in full together with eutocode typography files which can be used so that the fonts can be applied in applications, and can also produce a wish for the list to be a published open resource with a view to helping interoperability then I feel that that is about as far as I can go in this topic at the moment. However, I do feel that acting now may well be beneficial as a well known infrastructural method will be available for consideration when people want to produce such displays on interactive television displays. This is but one of a number of ideas for techniques to use in content authorship for the DVB-MHP platform. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast03200.htm In relation to the font of colour codes downloadable from the following page. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font7001.htm I have now produced a test version which includes those colour codes and also four for point size and 28 others for various aspects of access level multimedia authoring. This includes codes for variations of object replacement character defined within the Private Use Area. One is OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER SYNONYM because trying to place a U+FFFC into some wordprocessors can cause problems if the wordprocessor also accepts graphics and uses U+FFFC for that. The others are OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER with left, centre and right alignment. The rest are mostly to do with producing a basic programmed learning capability within a plain text file, including such items as GREEN MARKER and so on so that when a push button is pushed all input characters are skipped until a marker of the corresponding colour is reached. There are also a SKIP UNTIL CONTINUE and a CONTINUE MARKER so that programmed learning layouts following simple flow charts may be expressed in a sequential manner within a file. Thank you for your interest in reading through all of this posting. I have recently produced an ornaments font, which I am hoping to write up for the web, and wonder if you might like a copy. It is not a Unicode font, so that it can be easily used with the Paint program, though I am considering a Unicode version yet wondering quite how best to encode it. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/OLD_NEW_.TTF William Overington 18 March 2003
