Lao Font standard / keyboard mapping procedure, etc
tr...@cts.com
Sabydii dhuk qhon ....
This past couple of months has seen in influx of new interest and
continued repost of the regular paticipant to S.C.L (which is really good
news to all of us). Also in this few months span, we have seen number of
interest in Lao characters posting / Lao font requests and Lao fonts
commercially for sales in various places.
I was wondering (with limited knowledge).... if there is such a
standard or protocol in the past, the present, and in the future works of
anyone who is looking into the fonts issue ... to standardized or to
propose a standard key mapping of lao characters to that of an English
keyboard. We have seen a rampage of mapping as each author's see fit to
map them. As a group and for the sake of future .. and for a continuing
discussioin of and using Lao characters... we MUST come to one and only
one mapping of Lao characters to that of English keyboard. This is
particularly frustrating for the young Laotian, out foriegner friends who
have interest in learning and using Lao language. Many discussion has
been carried on todate in the LaoNet mail list. I like to see the general
inputs and proposal from everyone and of your ideas for some
implementation of such a standard ..... or am I way behind time and there
is one that everyoen stick with when designing Lao Fonts.
hak hpaang,
Thao Troy
p.s. because of my time commitment I won't be able to check s.c.l
regularly as I have been .. would appreciate your Cc: copy of your post or
new posting to my email account directly at tr...@cts.com
Sabydii Pi Mai .... Sok Dee dhuk dhuk qhon
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
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Jona...@cfdl.clara.net
On Fri, 28 Mar 1997 14:34:26 -0600, tr...@cts.com wrote:
>Sabydii dhuk qhon ....
> This past couple of months has seen in influx of new interest and
>continued repost of the regular paticipant to S.C.L (which is really good
>news to all of us). Also in this few months span, we have seen number of
> interest in Lao characters posting / Lao font requests and Lao fonts
>commercially for sales in various places.
> I was wondering (with limited knowledge).... if there is such a
>standard or protocol in the past, the present, and in the future works of
>anyone who is looking into the fonts issue ... to standardized or to
>propose a standard key mapping of lao characters to that of an English
>keyboard. We have seen a rampage of mapping as each author's see fit to
>map them. As a group and for the sake of future .. and for a continuing
>discussioin of and using Lao characters... we MUST come to one and only
>one mapping of Lao characters to that of English keyboard.
HERE HERE !!!
I agree with you this is a very important issue. In fact, in Laos, as far as I could make out there
was really only one PC font encoding in almost universal use plus one Mac encoding - which
unfortunately is not the same as the PC encoding! It seems that in the US all these other font
encodings like the old Alice fonts, Sengchanh and all sorts of other horrors that I have recently
discovered are still in widespread use.
It is noteable that in Laos these older "lower ascii" Lao fonts are almost never seen - this is
probably because until recently computers were virtually non-existant, and the "upper ascii" Lao
fonts such as Chanthabouli and Saysettha are the only ones for the PC that make any practical sense
and are backed up by sophisticated keyboard and spelling/word-break software, namely LSWIN.
As far as I know there is only one standard for upper ascii Lao on the PC and one for the Macintosh.
Although the upper ascii Lao for the PC is not the same as that for the Mac they are very similar -
in fact most characters are the same; however there are some characters that cause problems in the
Postscript printer control language - especially the raw, law and haw (if I remember correctly). I
did once try and convert a Mac font to the PC, but had difficulties because of this. I understand
that more recent versions of (a) Postscript and (b) Windows have either partially or possibly
completely worked around these problems, so the prospect of making a unified font encoding for the
Mac and the PC is now much more realistic than it used to be.
I very strongly feel that the continued use of the lower ascii Lao fonts should be very strongly
discouraged - fonts such as Sengchanh, and the old Alice (i.e. Alice_0 etc; by contrast the new
Alice fonts called Alice0 etc without the underscore are upper ascii fonts completely compatible
with Chanthabouli and Saysettha).
The disadvantages of the lower ascii Lao fonts (Sengchanh, Alice_0, etc) are many:
1) There are several different lower ascii encodings which is highly confusing and a nuisance.
2) There are serious problems combining lower ascii Lao fonts with Roman characters on the same
page, particularly where fonts for different sections of the page cannot be set separately - this is
particularly a problem on the internet where browsers like Netscape cannot cope with multiple fonts.
3) Lower ascii fonts are incompatible with important software and in particular with the internet.
For example you could not set your Netscape browser to display everything in Sengchanh or Alice_0,
as everything on the internet would look garbled (except the very rare text encoded in that font)
and so you wouldn't be able to get anywhere. It would be like trying to find your way around Tokyo
with a map of Istanbul and a Cuban-SerboCroat dictionary!
4) Trying to write extended Lao text in lower ascii is a PAIN! There is no (as far as I know)
software for dealing with word breaks, so all the line breaks have to be painstakingly adjusted
manually; as soon as you modify the text you then have to go through and adjust all the line breaks
again from scratch.
By contrast, there are many advantages of using the upper ascii fonts such as Chanthabouli,
Saysettha and the "new Alice fonts" such as Alice0:
1) There is only one standard for upper ascii Lao fonts for the PC; this is not quite the same as
the Lao fonts for the Macintosh, although most of the characters are the same.
2) Upper ascii Lao fonts can be mixed freely on the page with Roman fonts (English etc), including
on the Internet, since all upper ascii Lao fonts have the normal Roman characters in the lower ascii
positions. There are some factors that need to be improved - see below.
3) Upper ascii fonts are compatible with internet browsers such as Netscape and newsreaders such as
Free Agent. In Free Agent and other newsreaders you can easily define a language with a font to be
used with that language. I have set it up to use Saysettha font with the Lao language, therefore if
I am browsing soc.culture.laos and find a message in upper ascii Lao all I have to do is to select
the message, select language/Lao under the message menu, and any Lao text in the message immediately
appears in Lao script while any English text still remains readable as before. Whilst you can use
the same technique with the lower ascii fonts the problem is that when you read Soumaly's Lao poems
(which are written in lower ascii fonts) you find that the English text at the top is turned into
gibberish - this is because the lower ascii fonts are incompattible with English.
4) Using the LSWIN software, you can freely switch between typing in Lao and English (or French or
whatever you prefer, including accents), and LSWIN will automatically break the lines for you,
usually in the right places although a few minor adjustments are in order. In theory it will also do
spelling checks, although I have found that the spelling dictionary doesn't work properly and gets
half the spellings wrong (if you disagree, please email me). It can also convert all those horrible
old Alice_0 fonts into upper ascii fonts - it is a bit slow, but it seems to work. The same LSWIN
software that gives you the Lao keyboard layout can also be used with a keyboard layout for any
other language, and the software that comes with the package includes software for writing
and/modifying your own keyboard layouts. French and Thai are included in the package (although the
Thai font TTJumpha is slightly defective - one or two characters are incorrect - nevertheless the
package can equally well be used with any other Thai font).
5) The LSWIN software including fonts and everything you need is freely available on the internet
So my conclusion is: everything points to using the upper ascii fonts with LSWIN, so please lets all
start using them and leave the outdated lower ascii fonts behind with all their incompatibilities.
That said, however, there is room for improvement on several fronts:
1) The ultimate aim should be to unify both PC and Macintosh fonts in a single encoding, with
improved support for both Postscript and Truetype.
2) The Lao fonts for the PC are not attractive, are typographically exceptionally badly designed,
and make the text distinctly less readible than it should be. Macintosh fonts are available which
look very considerably better and are typographically much better, although they still leave room
for improvement.
3) Handling of combined vowels/tone marks etc needs some improvement, both in the character encoding
tables and in the keyboard layout tables.
4) The relative size of Roman and Lao characters in the font needs a lot of improvement to improve
the combination of both in the same font. This is important, but it is not as easy as it might seem
because the Lao vowels and tonemarks above and below the line require so much space.
5) The inclusion of duplicate sets of punctuation and and numerals in the Lao fonts is quite simply
LUNATIC!! What it means is that when a secretary types a document for you and you do a search for
something you cannot find it, because it is typed with the wrong full stop or the wrong 5! All
future keyboard layouts should only use the standard lower ascii punctuation and numeral character
codes (which can readily be duplicated onto both the Lao and English keyboards - the point is that a
full stop on the English keyboard must be the same ascii character code as a full stop on the Lao
keyboard, even if they are typed using a different key).
6) I think it would be worthwhile improving some of the keyboard positions on the Lao keyboard for
certain characters.
As you might guess from my fairly comprehensive comments I have already done a certain amount of
work on several of these problems. I can tell you something about the origins of the Macintosh
keyboard layouts and fonts. Back in about 1992 or so when Steve Rothstein first bravely set up an
Apple Centre in Vientiane he took the font encodings and keyboard layouts that were defined by
Apple, and he sat down with his own staff and developed some pretty workable Lao fonts (Bounyou
etc). They weren't perfect, but they looked quite reasonable and they worked without any problem
apart from being incompatible with the PC fonts. I know for a fact that he just took the character
codes directly from those defined by Apple. (In the early days he had talked of designing an optimum
keyboard layout and I had offered to help, but in the end he just took the character codes directly
from Apple). Where Apple got their character codes from I don't know, but presumably that was in
conjunction with the Lao community in California. This coding was broadly similar to the PC upper
ascii coding, but with significant differences particularly in the vowels and tone marks.
Back in the days when I was using a Macintosh I developed my own experimental Lao keyboard layout
which dealt with a number of problems with the standard Macintosh keyboard layout, and also
developed my own Macintosh font based on Steve's fonts but with a number of improvements and
corrections. I later developed a PC font based on my Macintosh font, which was generally much
admired in Luang Prabang, but this and all my work on the Macintosh font/keyboard layout was all
lost of coarse when I was abducted by Lao government gangsters (namely by the so-called chief of the
Criminal-Economic Section of the Luang Prabang Police Mr Thongchan Sanaphon, and his pals in
Vientiane) on 10th August 1996.
Troy, your suggestion of standardising the Lao font software and keyboard layouts is an important
one. What is really needed is a group of people rather than a single individual working in
isolation, and if such a group is formed I am happy to contribute to it. The internet is obviously
the ideal medium for creating such a group.
Hak phaeng
Jonathan
Soumaly
> but this and all my work on the Macintosh font/keyboard layout was all
>lost of coarse when I was abducted by Lao government gangsters (namely by
the >so-called chief of the Criminal-Economic Section of the Luang Prabang
Police Mr >Thongchan Sanaphon, and his pals in Vientiane) on 10th August
1996.
Jonathan would you please share with us about your horrible experiences by
the hands of the Sub human animals the Communist Pathet Lao and their
Vietnames Comrades lead by Khamtaay(Dead Gold), Nouhaak(Rat Puke) and
their gangs.
I know that several of us would be very much appreciated if you would
share your experiences with us!! Thank you.
Soumaly!!
Pan Thongvilu
In article <333d9dfb...@news.clara.net>, Jona...@cfdl.clara.net writes:
|> On Fri, 28 Mar 1997 14:34:26 -0600, tr...@cts.com wrote:
|>
|> >Sabydii dhuk qhon ....
|> > This past couple of months has seen in influx of new interest and
|> >continued repost of the regular paticipant to S.C.L (which is really good
|> >news to all of us). Also in this few months span, we have seen number of
|> > interest in Lao characters posting / Lao font requests and Lao fonts
|> >commercially for sales in various places.
|> > I was wondering (with limited knowledge).... if there is such a
|> >standard or protocol in the past, the present, and in the future works of
|> >anyone who is looking into the fonts issue ... to standardized or to
|> >propose a standard key mapping of lao characters to that of an English
|> >keyboard. We have seen a rampage of mapping as each author's see fit to
|> >map them. As a group and for the sake of future .. and for a continuing
|> >discussioin of and using Lao characters... we MUST come to one and only
|> >one mapping of Lao characters to that of English keyboard.
|>
|> HERE HERE !!!
|>
Sabaydii Jonathan et all,
Beautiful comments, I invite your to look at a broad LaoNet's project
along your line of recommendation called "Lao System for Information
Exchange" (LSIE) although not unique to PC, we aim to develop accross
platforms of information. ref. /bane_lao/LSIE/:
This subdirectory is intended to house all relevant information
concerning the development of a uniform Lao computer system for
exchanging information, ultimately in real Lao.
1 - Lao Romanisation for Transliteration (LRT), a complete scheme for
the transcription of Lao using roman characters. It is a
bidirectional transliteration scheme, which would allow LRT text to
be converted to real Lao. LRT parallels Lao grammartically, it
therefore will enable the migration to real Lao writing easy once
LRT is mastered for those who would approach learning Lao from
English. LRT had archieved at least 80% straight reading or sounding
of Lao text.
2- LaoASCII set, a standard assignment of binary codes to Lao
characters which will be submitted for ISO/Unicode approval. It is hope
that instead of pure linear assignment of codes to Lao characters
as they appear in Lao alphabet, they would be arranged in groups by
their functional chracteristic eg. if x<LASCII<y in the case of Tao
Sakod ng, y, n, m, r, l, w which are consonants but are used as
ending sound notation, should be treated differently.
3- Lao keyboard mapping, Lao existing key mapping inherits the layout
from typewriter, of which the design is of convinient of
manufacturing the leadface. The new layout will be based on the
study of the frequency usage of Lao characters in a text. The new
mapping will be organised the most used keys close to the keyboard
home keys. However, the new keyboard will accompany thge old
keyboard that may be preferred by typist who is accustomed to the
typewriter keyboard. The computer technology does allow this
flexibility of choice to the end user.
4- Lao fonts, create tools, utilities and extensive font library of the most
popular formats eg. MetaFont, TrueTypeFont, BitmappedDistributionFont.
5- After the implementation of step 2 & 4, a version of Multilingual
Enhancement of GNU Emacs, a multilingual wordprocessor can be
implemented for X Windows platform.
6- Develop a system that can handle the transfer of Lao text over the
electronic super highway. It is planned to use LRT as the basis for
such system, where eg. using some MSWindow application that would
handle Lao or any system that can display Lao writing. The Lao text
can be translated and transmitted in LRT text, where the end user can view
it in Lao or if the system is not capable of displaying Lao, it
is left to LRT to convey the message. The issue of efficiency is a
non issue since LRT is a one to one relationship with Lao. There
could even be an improvement since LRT uses 7 bits ascii over 8
bits of Unicode.
We invite all to join this project. To update on the above objectives:
1) Done ref. http://www.litmac1.epfl.ch/Exprirem.html
2) On going. As far as Unicode is concerned the current code assignment is
set in 'concrete' so functional grouping is out of the question for the
moment.
3) It lost the momentum, I need lots and lots of Lao doc, it does not
matter what formats (Word, CU etc..) so I can derive characters usage
frequency table. Then design something that is non RSI.
4) Hmm! On hold
5) In progress re:Sihattha Rasphone <siha...@jaist.ac.jp>
6) In progress, furthermore maybe proposing in HTML4.0 a language tag eg.
eg. Hello in Lao is <LAO>Sabaydii</LAO>, and in Thai <THAI>Swatdee</THAI>
with browser Unicode aware a multilingual document is thus possible
without cut and paste OR having fonts with duplicate symbols.
|>
|> That said, however, there is room for improvement on several fronts:
|> 1) The ultimate aim should be to unify both PC and Macintosh fonts in a single encoding, with
|> improved support for both Postscript and Truetype.
If Apple so desire yes, but they are in their own world.
|> 2) The Lao fonts for the PC are not attractive, are typographically exceptionally badly designed,
|> and make the text distinctly less readible than it should be. Macintosh fonts are available which
|> look very considerably better and are typographically much better, although they still leave room
|> for improvement.
Definitely, but font technology still favors Roman characters. To make
Lao characters handling better one need to improve glyph, kerning etc..
|> 3) Handling of combined vowels/tone marks etc needs some improvement, both in the character encoding
|> tables and in the keyboard layout tables.
This is improving as wordprocessing is becoming WYSWYG, the past combined
mess of vowels/tone marks is due to cramping of symbols within a fixed
'grid'.
|> 4) The relative size of Roman and Lao characters in the font needs a lot of improvement to improve
|> the combination of both in the same font. This is important, but it is not as easy as it might seem
|> because the Lao vowels and tonemarks above and below the line require so much space.
WYSWYG will also offer true proportinality.
|> 5) The inclusion of duplicate sets of punctuation and and numerals in the Lao fonts is quite simply
|> LUNATIC!! What it means is that when a secretary types a document for you and you do a search for
|> something you cannot find it, because it is typed with the wrong full stop or the wrong 5! All
|> future keyboard layouts should only use the standard lower ascii punctuation and numeral character
|> codes (which can readily be duplicated onto both the Lao and English keyboards - the point is that a
|> full stop on the English keyboard must be the same ascii character code as a full stop on the Lao
|> keyboard, even if they are typed using a different key).
This is because in the past 'cos of system is only capable of supporting
a limited set of fonts, once you replace the fonts, the fonts needs
to accomodate for symbols that the system needs ie. duplicate them
in multiple fonts.
|> 6) I think it would be worthwhile improving some of the keyboard positions on the Lao keyboard for
|> certain characters.
|>
Re. LSIE project #3, with a computer personalised keyboard is possible
with keys mapping ala 'KEYMAN' used in LSWIN or 'keysym' use in XWindows.
Thanks for the exchange of ideas, hopefully by so coming out we can
combine the effort and move the project onto a faster gear :))
Hak hpaang,
Pan