[Lohit-devel-list] Need information regarding Samvruthokaram ligature in Malayalam fonts

[Shriramana Sharma]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Rahul Bhalerao <b.rahul.pm at gmail.com> wrote:
> The original issue was as follows:
>  - The 'samvruthokaram' syllable in malayalam is actually a half vowel which
> is formed by vowel 'U' (Unicode 0D41) followed by the halanth character in
> malayalam.
>  - Since halanth is by default allowed only after a consonant, the sequence
> for samvruthokaram was yielding a dotted circle in between
>  - Hence it was necessary to amend the rendering engine to allow this
> sequence

Yeah but there is no justification for inventing a new ligature.
Inventing new written forms as part of script should not be done by
font makers/maintainers. The user community as per guidance of
scholars should invent these and if officially/widely accepted then
font makers should update their font

> There is a long discussion on this and few other issues on the old bug at:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=242016

I don't seem to find any detail there on this particular issue.

> As far the shape of the glyph in Lohit font is concerned, once the rendering
> engine issue of dotted circle was resolved, the shape of the ligature for
> samvruthokaram was changed on the request of Ani Peter. I am not able to
> find the old bug in bugzilla but remember that the particular ligature was
> added on request from Ani. May be Ani can give some linguistic justification
> for the particular shape which I am not aware of.

If there is any attestation for the use and acceptance of this
ligature in the script as seen in books/newspapers etc, I'd like to
see that. I feel Lohit is NOT the platform for glyph inventions...

-- 
Shriramana Sharma ஶ்ரீரமணஶர்மா श्रीरमणशर्मा