[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 82, Issue 10

[Christopher Fynn]

On 13 December 2011 07:54, Bernard Simon <bernie.simon at gmail.com> wrote:

> In my reading I discovered that Macintosh uses a different method for
> indicating where ligatures are attached than Windows and Linux. So
> fonts made just for the Macintosh will not work for other systems. but
> it is possible to make fonts with both sets information that will work
> on all three systems.

Mac OSX now supports OpenType as well as their own ATSUI format fonts
and, if you make Open Type look-ups in a font in the right way, the
font will now work on Windows, Linux and Mac. No need for any Mac
specific tables. There is also a way of making the OpenType tables in
a Tibetan font work with any version of Adobes InDesign CS3 and above
as well. (Adobe applications use their own rendering engines rather
than the one available from the operating system). If anyone actually
wants to know how to do this they can contact me.

Tibetan fonts made specifically for the Mac won't work under Windows -
they may work in some applications under Linux, depending on which
rendering engine is being used by the application.

The Monlam Tibetan fonts may give problems since they have a number of
serious errors in the way they are encoded. As far as I can tell,
these fonts mostly originate from non-Unicode Tibetan fonts originally
made in China which he has adapted to Unicode by pasting the glyphs
into another Unicode Tibetan font which he has used as a kind of
template. The actual glyph outlines are point for point identical to
some old commercial Tibetan fonts made in China.

- Chris