Thanks for sharing this Chris. Need to get it tried for Sinhala. Others in the list, can we all try this?

Regards,

Ruvan.


Christopher Fynn wrote:

Dear Ruvan and everybody

Without waiting for script specific support from Adobe, by experimenting
a bit I have got Tibetan script working in InDesgn CS3 and above as
follows:

In an OpenType font I put a set of additional lookups under the
combination of "DFLT" script tag and "dflt" language tag. These
additional lookups use only 'generic' OpenType features (i.e. those used
in Adobe's Latin OT fonts) such as ccmp, rlig, liga, calt, kern. (the
init, medi, fina, mark & mkmk features probably also work since some
Adobe fonts use them - but I haven't tried these yet) - as well as the
regular set of lookups under the script specific set of features
Microsoft's Uniscribe uses.

In other words my Tibetan font now has two sets of lookups - one under
DFLT script tag and dflt language tag - the other set under tibt script
tag and dflt language tag.

The two sets of lookups are very similar even though the OT་་feature
sets are different. This required some experimentation and I had to
modify a few things in the font and include some additional ligatures to
get it to work. The key thing is that Adobe OpenType engine recognises
lookups under the DFLT script tag (must be capitalized) and applies them
irrespective of the Unicode range of the initial characters. MS
Uniscribe totally ignores features and lookups under the DFLT script tag
and applies script specific sets of features to specific Unicode ranges.

My guess is that one can get OpenType fonts for other complex scripts
working in InDesign and other Adobe apps like this - without waiting for
Adobe to add specific support your script.

Interestingly InDesign CS3 already recognises the correct line break
opportunities for Tibetan.

With best regards.

- Chris

Ruvan Weerasinghe wrote:
> We left this discussion sometime ago, but I thought let's start a
> community kind of pressure group for getting Complex Script support in
> Adobe.
>
> Please don't dismiss this as a fruitless exercise - let's try it!
>
> Here's the URL: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b54384
>
> You need to register - I did with my gmail address, but you seem to be
> able to even put fake address since there is no authentication. But
> maybe, just maybe, Adobe may reply me even if not in this public forum...
>
> Please do this - it takes 5 mins - and get others in the region to do so...
>
> Ruvan.