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GUNJALA GONDI VIRAMA behaves inconsistently with the Unicode Standard’s current definition #3

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lianghai opened this issue Jun 1, 2020 · 5 comments

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@lianghai
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lianghai commented Jun 1, 2020

Font

NotoSansGunjalaGondi-Regular.otf

Where the font came from, and when

Site: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/blob/master/phaseIII_only/unhinted/otf/NotoSansGunjalaGondi/NotoSansGunjalaGondi-Regular.otf
Date: 2020-06-01

Font Version

1.001

OS name and version

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 (19F96) —However, the font was tested in a HarfBuzz environment. See the next section.

Application name and version

FontGoggles 1.1.15

Issue

The Unicode Standard currently defines U+11D97 GUNJALA GONDI VIRAMA as having Indic_Syllabic_Category = Invisible_Stacker, which is based on the encoding proposal. This property value suggests the character is purely artificial and is only used to form conjuncts, not having a visible form for killing the inherent vowel of a consonant letter. In the font, the character behaves like an ISCII virama instead.

  1. Steps to reproduce: shape the sample string (provided in the section “Character data”) with the font.
  2. Observed results: <base na, base na with overt virama/halant, half na and base na>
  3. Expected results: <base na, base na with artificial placeholder (typically a below-base plus sign), half na and base na>

If an overt virama/halant is deemed needed by the script, a proposal should be submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee. A new character will be likely preferred at this point for this behavior. Unilaterally producing fonts with an innovative behavior is harmful to text exchange, and often eventually leads to unideal patches in the Unicode Standard to address the incompatibility.

Note there is also an ongoing investigation on a related issue (regarding how standalone half forms may be needed): UTC Action Item 162-A59

Character data

𑵺 𑵺𑶗 𑵺𑶗𑵺

See the section “Screenshot” for code points and character names.

Screenshot

Screen Shot 2020-06-02 at 00 06 10

Fyi, the following is hb-shape (HarfBuzz) 2.6.6’s output:

[Na.GGondi=0+650|space=1+270|NaHalant.GGondi=2+650|space=4+270|NaHalf.GGondi=5+620|Na.GGondi=7+650]

@marekjez86
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@lianghai : Thank you

@lianghai
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lianghai commented Jun 2, 2020

Quoting Ek Type’s preliminary response on Instagram:

Script users showed us the use of Virama to teach kids, and at the end of words during our interactions with them.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA5VlTJp-im/

@nizarsq
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nizarsq commented Aug 25, 2020

Screen Shot 2020-08-24 at 10 02 48 PM

@simoncozens
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Observed results: <base na, base na with overt virama/halant, half na and base na>
Expected results: <base na, base na with artificial placeholder (typically a below-base plus sign), half na and base na>

Does the Unicode Standard specify what form the "artificial placeholder" should take? If not, then this behaviour is not technically inconsistent...

But I take your point. If a visible virama is needed and later encoded, then having this here is a problem.

I don't know how to best balance the needs of users and the standards compliance issue, particularly since there isn't a visible Gunja Gondi virama on the horizon.

@simoncozens
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This bug has been open for three years, and we have not seen any proposals for a visible virama. The "ongoing investigation" into half forms, as far as I can tell, never got a response. You said in your question to Ek Type that "the situation is getting problematic". What problems have you noticed in practice?

@simoncozens simoncozens closed this as not planned Won't fix, can't repro, duplicate, stale Oct 24, 2023
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