[ubuntu-in] SCIM: Some Questions in Baraha system

[Gora Mohanty]

On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 22:27 -0400, Dinbandhu wrote: 
> Dear Gora,
> 
> Some follow-up questions regarding the baraha and Unicode work:
[...]

> I am wondering if you have finished work on the Shiva font yet? I
> would like very much to see and try it, as I haven't found a Hindi
> Unicode font yet that I really like. The TTF Baraha font that I used
> to use I found clearer and more traditional than most of what I see in
> Unicode which is quite modernistic and blockish. 

I have one remaining issue in how to handle some special glyphs
in 8-bit fonts, e.g., ones that combine a matra with a reph, and
thus require reordering of input characters. I hope to have this
fixed over the next couple of days, and will in any case make
something available by Wed., as the work is largely done, and
ready for testing to commence.

> I would also like to consider getting the Baraha TTF Hindi font working
> in Unicode, and would be willing to get it set up if there is some
> guideline for how to do it.

Sure, and your help in getting this working will be most useful.
The problem is that it will require me to prepare at least a
minimal write-up, and I am not sure if I can promise to finish
that even by the middle of next week. Let us see how that goes.

> 2. When typing in OO Writer, there is a default font which Writer
> always starts using whenever typing in Hindi. You had mentioned
> earlier that it just selects whichever is first in its list. Is there
> a way to change what will be the default font, to one which
> I like better?

For GUI applications that use the fontconfig system (which should
now cover most applications, including Open Office), for Unicode
input, the default Hindi font that is used should be the one listed
first when one types,
  fc-list :lang=hi
in a terminal. Likewise, use the 2-letter ISO code for other
languages to check those, e.g.,
  fc-list :lang=te
for Telugu. You can find the file that corresponds to the font with
  fc-list :lang=hi file
If the order of fonts shown by the above command is not desirable
(on Ubuntu, it is probably preferable that something like Lohit
Hindi or Gargi be the default font), it is possible to change that
with configuration directives in ~/.fonts.conf (per user), or
/etc/fonts/local.conf. I have forgotten the details of these,
but will send them in a separate message, or someone else can
chip in.

> 3. When typing in hi-baraha in OO Writer, it seems to have trouble
> with certain characters in particular settings. For example:
> 
> A) If one types the specific combination: "मैं (that is, मैं after a
> quote mark) then the ( ं ) will not type, and it happens every time.
> This ( ं ) will type in any other character after the ("), but not in
> the specific word: मैं . And मैं otherwise almost always types fine in
> OO Writer so long as not preceded by (").
> 
>   B) When one types [तुम जाओ], then by typing the final "]",
> the ओ just prior to it gets deleted. This happens less if the opening
> "[" is not present, and does not seem to be a problem with most other
> characters. However, it also happens with ए. if an ए is typed just
> before a final "]", then there too, the ए  is deleted. 
> 
> None of the above happens in my e-mail software, Evolution. But it
> happens in Open Office. 

Will check it out. I am in the middle of a dist-upgrade, and
cannot check Open Office or SCIM at the moment. Could you tell us
which version of Open Office you are using, i.e., what output do
you get on typing
  dpkg -l openoffice.org
in a terminal. 

> 4. Some Hindi fonts switch to Times Roman or Arial font whenever
> punctuation is typed such as ,.|?!"'[]{} etc. When that happens, the
> Times Roman/Arial character sometimes doesn't match at all in size
> with the Hindi font. Is there a way to avert this problem?

This happens because the Hindi font that you are using does not
include glyphs for Latin letters (including punctuation), so that
the application is getting these from some other font, which is
why the glyph sizes are mismatched. The best way to fix this is
to ask the font designer to include Latin characters from a
suitable free font in the Hindi font. As this is quite a common
problem, the designer ought to be willing to do that.

Regards,
Gora