tibwn.ini File Format

Jskad and WylieWord both make use of a data file named tibwn.ini.  This document concerns the structure and content of that data file.

The purpose of the file is to encode all knowledge of the Tibetan Machine (TM) and Tibetan Machine Web (TMW) fonts.  Specifically, the following knowledge is found:

Much of this knowledge is found in the documentation for the TM and TMW fonts.  Note the errata for this document, as it especially concerns the data in tibwn.ini.

File Format -- Overview

The tibwn.ini file format allows for comments, blank lines (entirely blank, containing not even whitespace), Section headers, comma-delimited lists, and newline-delimited rows of tilde-delimited data.  A comment line is any line that begins with two slashes ('//'); the entire line is ignored.  A blank line is ignored, too.  A section header is a line '<?section-name?>'.  A comma-delimited list must fit entirely on one line.

File Format -- Sections

The tibwn.ini file is broken up into sections.  Currently, these are as follows:

The Consonants, Numbers, Vowels, and Other sections contain comma-delimited lists of the THDL Extended Wylie representations of each consonant, number, etc. that the application reading tibwn.ini wishes to support.  Note that it is not possible to represent a comma (though extending the file format to do so would likely work along the same lines as the support for '~' characters via __TILDE__).  These sections should probably be discarded entirely so that applications and users can choose which characters to support themselves.  The rest of the file is application-independent.

The remaining sections are the meat of the file.  Each one contains zero or more rows of data, one row per line.  Each line looks like this: 

h~61,1~1,100~1,62~1,109~1,112~1,123~1,125~10,115~10,122~0F67~1,102~

Each line describes one glyph in the Tibetan Machine Web font.  There are thirteen tilde-delimited columns per line, though the last two columns are optional.  An empty column takes no space; for example, 

_~32,1~~2,32~~~~~~~0020

has non-empty data for only columns 1 (the first column, i.e. the one containing an underscore), 2, 4, and 11.  When it is desirable to represent a tilde ('~') character, __TILDE__ is used.  For example, in the THDL Extended Wylie for nyi zla, a tilde is used, so this line occurs: 

__TILDE__^~91,5~~9,89~~~~~~~0F82

The columns themselves each have a meaning.  They are as follows:

Tibetan Machine Font Indices

The following are the indices this file format uses to refer to the TibetanMachine font files:

Tibetan Machine Web Font Indices

The following are the indices this file format uses to refer to the TibetanMachineWeb font files:

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