115 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
115 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
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******************** About Tibetan Machine Uni File ***************************
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Author: Than Garson
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Date: August 18, 2004
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Organization: Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library (http://thdl.org)
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The SourceForge CVS folder, thdltools/Fonts/TibetanMachineUni, contains
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the alpha version of the Tibetan Machine Uni font, which is an
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OpenType, Unicode version of the original Tibetan Machine font. The
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original font, Tibetan Machine, was designed and created by Tony Duff
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of the Tibetan Computer company (http://www.tibet.dk/tcc/). Tibetan
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Machine was purchased and made available to the public under the GNU
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Public License by the Trace Foundation (http://trace.org/). This
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suite of fonts was converted into a single OpenType Unicode font by
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the Than Garson of the Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library and Chris
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Fynn. Tibetan Machine Uni is also governed by the GPL
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(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).
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To use the font, you will need software that correctly lays out
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Tibetan Unicode fonts. Some recent versions of Microsoft's Uniscribe
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work (but have these been released to end users yet or just
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developers?). Pango 1.8.0 supposedly works, but we haven't tested the
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font with it. Hopefully there are other packages that work also.
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The folder contains several versions of the font plus the table data
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embedded in the font with the OpenType rendering instructions. The
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following files have been included:
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* TibetanMachineUniAlpha.ttf - This is the "shipped" True Type
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version of the font with all
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production tables removed. It
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functions as a regular font but
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the user cannot view the lookup
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tables.
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* TibetanMachineUniAlphaFL.vfb - This is the FontLab file from
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which the True Type font was
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created.
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* TibetanMachineUniAlphaVolt.ttf - This is the True Type
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version of the font WITH
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the production tables
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embedded. One can view
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these tables through using
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Microsoft's VOLT program.
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VOLT stands for Visual
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OpenType Layout Tool. For
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details, see:
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http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/volt/default.htm
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* TableData [folder] - This folder contains the data exported
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from VOLT that makes up the OpenType
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Layout tables. It contains the
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following files and folders:
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* TMUniAlphaGlyphs.vtd - This is the glyph-definition
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table that assigns names and
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types to the glyphs based on
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their index number.
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* GlyphGroups [folder] - This folder contains 24
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tables that define the glyph
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groups within VOLT. The
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files are named as they
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appear in the VOLT interface.
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* Lookups [folder] - This folder contains 27 tables
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the define the lookups within
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VOLT.
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The naming of the glyph groups is based on the following abbreviations:
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U - refers to a group that takes a certain "u" or zhabs kyu.
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V - refers to a group that takes a certain set of (subscribed)
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vowels that are all at the same height.
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N - means "negative" because the minus sign cannot be used in
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a group name.
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B - means an alternative set of glyphs
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### - numbers in the name refer to the height of the vowel or
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zhabs kyu used.
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Example: VN324GLYPHS.vtg - is a group of glyphs which take vowels at
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the height of -324.
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U0BGLYPHS.vtg - is a group of glyphs which take an alternate
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zhabs kyu whose height is the baseline (0).
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The zhabs kyu glyph is itself called
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uni0F74.alt0b.
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The names of the vowel glphys in FontLab and in Volt were created in
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the following way: "uni" + hex unicode + ".alt" + height. Thus,
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"uni0F71.altN180" is the subscribed a-chung whose uppermost height is
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-180. In this way, the glyph groups are named in a way that easily
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corresponds them to the appropriate vowel glyphs. Because there was
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greater variety of zhabs kyus (u) in the original fonts, these have
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sometimes required a second layer of lookups to apply the most
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appropriate version.
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The Lookup tables follow the same naming procedure, except that they
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do not have "GLYPHS" appended at the end of their names. Thus,
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"V252.vtl" contains the lookups for substituting vowels whose max
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height is 252. Of course, these lookups are applied to the
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"V252GLYPHS.vtg" glyph group, and so on.
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Please refer any questions to thdltools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
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or
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to Chris Fynn or Than Garson through the THDL Tools project at
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SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/thdltools
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