Tamil Troubles

Paul Miller

It has been a long time since I have been on TypeDrawers, but now I have a problem and I need help with a technical issue.

I have now included the Tamil script into the font 'Munson'.

Most of it works quite well. However I then tried to incorporate the pre-reform characters into the script as well. I first tried adding them as Stylistic Alternate, but when used in a word processor or a DTP program they didn't come out, the characters stayed as their base forms. So I added them as Stylistic Set, Historical Forms and Contextual Alternates, none of them work. They work in Font Creator but in Libre Office, Ability Office, Inkscape and Scribus the characters remain in their base forms when the open type feature is applied to them.

I have not tried this in Microsoft Word as I don't have Microsoft Word on my system.

Does anyone know what the problem could be, I am unable to post the font file in this forum because it is not one of the supported types.

Peter Constable

Tamil script requires an OpenType Layout shaping engine, and the implementation may have a Tamil- or Indic-specific engine. It's possible that the shaping engine for Tamil doesn't support discretionary features. I believe that's still the case for Microsoft's Indic engine, unfortunately.