Features/IndicUnicode6

Lohit Unicode 6.0 support

Summary

Unicode 6.0 support for Indian script (Assamese/Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu) with improved Lohit fonts.

Owner

• Name: Pravin Satpute

• Email: psatpute@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 17
• Last updated: 2012-02-27
• Percentage of completion: 90%

Detailed Description

Lohit font family is default for Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu language. Presently lohit does not support characters added in Unicode 6.0 script supporting these languages. User can not use these missing characters in Fedora due to unavailability of fonts. Even if any website having data consisting of these characters will not render perfect and user can not read it perfectly. Typing these characters can give only Square-Box to users. Below is the list of missing characters.

• Malayalam script
  • u0D3D; MALAYALAM SIGN AVAGRAHA
  • u0D44; VOWEL SIGN VOCALIC RR
  • 0D29; MALAYALAM LETTER NNNA
  • 0D3A; MALAYALAM LETTER TTTA

• Devanagari Script
  • u0900; DEVANAGARI SIGN INVERTED CANDRABINDU
  • u094E; DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN PRISHTHAMATRA E
  • u094F; DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN AW
  • u0955; DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN CANDRA LONG E
  • u0975; DEVANAGARI LETTER AW
  • u0979; DEVANAGARI LETTER ZHA
  • u097A; DEVANAGARI LETTER HEAVY YA

• Bengali script
  • u09FB; BENGALI GANDA MARK

• Devanagari Extended
  • uA8E0 to uA8FF

• Oriya script
  • u0B72;ORIYA FRACTION ONE QUARTER
  • u0B73;ORIYA FRACTION ONE HALF
  • u0B74;ORIYA FRACTION THREE QUARTERS
  • u0B75;ORIYA FRACTION ONE SIXTEENTH
  • u0B76;ORIYA FRACTION ONE ErIGHTH
  • u0B77;ORIYA FRACTION THREE

This feature will add these missing characters in Lohit fonts.

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora will get Lohit font family supporting latest characters of Unicode 6.0. This is important as user can use Unicode 6.0 latest characters to create and view data. This required changes in Lohit fonts packages.

This feature will make sure Lohit fonts family support these characters and users can get perfect rendering of these characters across all Fedora applications. This will help users to use latest characters for create data and read online website with the latest Unicode characters and improve user experience.

Scope

This is enhancement in Lohit font family. Developer need to add missing characters in Lohit fonts. This will not affect any other components of distribution. Fonts will have shapes for missing Unicode 6.0 characters in supported script.

How To Test

1. yum install lohit-*

2. Open gedit/openoffice/kwrite

3. Type above list Unicode characters either with available input method or control+shift+u

User Experience

End users can use above listed characters of Unicode 6.0 to create and view content.

Dependencies

No dependencies.

Contingency Plan

Present version of Lohit fonts support Unicode 5.0. Users can use Lohit fonts as it is without any problem even if this feature not get completed within time.

Documentation

• https://fedorahosted.org/lohit/browser/trunk/devanagari/TODO

Release Notes

• Provides Unicode 6.0 support for Indian script (Assamese/Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu) with improved Lohit fonts.

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/IndicUnicode6