Graduating Lao Fonts

[Philip]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and not a graphic designer or font developer.  

I stumbled on https://fonts.google.com/earlyaccess this morning because I'm struggling to draft doc and sheet templates in the Lao language. There are currently no graduated Lao Fonts, but a number of Lao fonts in Early Access including:

Dhyana

Lao Muang Don

LaoSansPro

NotoSansLao

NotoSerifLao

Phetsarath

Nhoui, a user in this group has a post (the only one, apparently) referencing Lao fonts that talks about some errors in the Dhyana font. I've downloaded all of the ones above and had a look. From my eye, they all appear to have some kerning issues and (again, to my eye) seem somewhat limited in their appropriate usage scenarios. The one exception to this is the official approved font of Lao PDR: Phetsarath. This font, lambasted widely in Laos as not very pretty, is regardless standard and used widely in government documents and as of 2014 has an official decree from the government declaring it the official font of Laos (.pdf).

Graduating Phetsarath would be a very simple solution to making a Lao font available for use. If Google wants a chance at getting Lao users to switch from pirated Office copies to Docs/Sheets/Slides, there needs to be a Lao font! Phetsarath is a great, standard first step.

[Philip]

+Anyone monitoring these boards? This seem like one of the least active google groups I've come across is some time :)

[Philip]

Me again. Just checking in to see if anyone out there is listening. Again, the question is, how to encourage graduating a Lao font. My vote is for Phetsarath.

[Dave Crossland]

This group is not very active, its true; I've filed an issue on the GF issue tracker to make sure we track doing this. 

https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1721

[Philip]

Thanks Dave for responding! I'll watch the github thread.