May 9, 2003
unicode update
In yesterday’s post I mentioned that I was experimenting with Unicode Tibetan. “By total coincidence, I’m sure,” Roger P Wright sent the following post to Lotsawa:
I’ve been looking for a working Tibetan Unicode font recently. As you all probably know, Arial Unicode-MS doesn’t work well for Tibetan.
I found one here: http://www.yudit.org/download/fonts/ which dates from last autumn. I tried it out - it’s not perfect, but it’s probably as good as you can have with ‘plain’ Truetype function. It’s by Gregor Mokhin and covered by the GPL.
I did find another one from the University of Virginia THDL project but it is not finished yet and the draft version had a few problems: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~tt3e/files/Research.html. It’s by Tashi Tsering at University of Virginia.
This would explain why my tests worked, but didn’t look great on a Windows machine with no added fonts. As for the vowels (and stacking letters) not displaying correctly, I think that has more to do with browser configuration [or possibly OS configuration?] than an inherent fault with the Unicode fonts.
I’d be curious to know if you are seeing Tibetan characters or not and what operating system and browser you are using.
posted @ 6:55 AM
Arial Unicode does not contain any OpenType layout tables for Tibetan so it will not dispay Tibetan conjuncts correctly. You will just get glyphs similar to those in the Unicode standard character chart for Tibetan.
I have created three Unicode fonts for Dzongkha (Bhutanese) for the Government of Bhutan. These fonts contain OpenType layout tables and will display Tibetan properly if you are using Windows XP, Office 2003 and have the latest version of USP10.DLL installed. (You will need tese for any OpenType Tibetan font to work properly in Windows)
Unfortunately the fonts I made for the RGoB are not yet publicly available.
Other OpenType fonts for Tibetan are already available from Mr Gregor Verhufen in Germany.
- Chris
posted by Chris Fynn on November 28, 2003 11:39 PMXenotype Technologies have a Unicode based “Tibetan Language” kit and font for Mac OSX
see: http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxTibetan.html
and I understand that Otani University in Japan is also developing an AAT Tibetan font for Mac OSX.
Thanks for all of the info, Chris. I used to use the Otani University fonts on Mac OS 8 & 9, so it will be interesting to see what they produce for X. Right now I think the best option (and cheapest!) is the University of Virginia’s Tibetan Machine Web.
posted by tom on December 3, 2003 10:35 AMTibetan Computer Resource Centre, Dharamsala has developed Unicode font and its is currently working with Tibetan Library system (LTWA, CIHTS and Songtsen Library) and Dictionary (www.popdict.com).
If any of you wish to test or use our tools kindly contact us.
Jigme
posted by Jigme Tsering on March 30, 2004 07:48 AM
Another solution for Unicode Tibetan script under X Windows is m17n.lib . This does not require OpenType - or any other “smart font” technology as the intelligence is in the library.
It is also capable of supporting OpenType fonts as well (though this feature has not yet been added for Tibetan).
posted by Chris Fynn on July 4, 2004 03:22 PM
Another solution for Unicode Tibetan script under X Windows is m17n.lib . This does not require OpenType - or any other “smart font” technology as the intelligence is in the library.
It is also capable of supporting OpenType fonts as well (though this feature has not yet been added for Tibetan).
posted by Chris Fynn on July 4, 2004 03:22 PM
UPDATE
There is now a preliminary (alpha) version of a Tibetan OpenType font “Tibetan Machine Uni” available from:
and Unicode Tibetan input methods available from:
Thanks, Chris! I appreciate you providing the links for the latest Tibetan language technology here. I’ll check those fonts out when I get my own computer back online.
posted by tom on September 18, 2004 07:13 AMUPDATE
The Tibetan Machine Unicode font from THDL, an OpenType Tibetan font for Unicode, has now been packaged for Debian Linux. see:
The Windows version is available from:
- Chris
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