Re: Support for Indian languages

[Oliver Corff]

Hi Karthik,

if I understand correctly the scripts for Indian languages all require
extensive combination mechanisms for base consonants and accompanying
vowels which may be placed above, below or even *before* the consonant
nucleus of the syllable. Very similar is the Tibetan script which
borrows these mechanisms from Indian scripts --- I mention this because
we had the same discussion on Tibetan a few months ago. While it is
possible to express the proper orthography via the ligature mechanisms
in otf (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, ttf) fonts, groff only has
limited support for these features as the ligature mechanism is
hard-wired into groff, not into the font processing mechanism.

As far as I understand Heirloom troff ("The Heirloom Documentation
Tools", https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html) can handle
otf fonts directly. So this may be a feasible path for you.

Please keep us informed if you are successful.

Best,

Oliver.


On 04/12/2024 17:15, karthik holla wrote:
> I am new to groff. Do we have support for Indian languages? I tried
> installing the required fonts using the script install-font.sh. But I am
> unable to get it to work.

--
Dr. Oliver Corff
mailto:oliver.corff@email.de