Wikipedia:Font

From Wikipedia

This page is about the encoding and font that will be used on the Myanmar Wikipedia.

There are four options that I've seen used on the internet for the display of Burmese characters.

1. A non-Unicode font that substitutes ISO-8859-1 characters (e.g. A B C D E) with Burmese glyphs.
2. A font with Burmese characters in the Myanmar Unicode block, with additional glyphs added to overcome non-compliant display engines.
3. A fully Unicode compliant font, with associated display technology.
4. Displaying dynamically generated PNGs (or GIFs).

This encyclopedia is using the third option at the moment. We are using an OpenType font that contains information on how to render Burmese characters according to the Unicode standard.

Two fonts that work are:

• Myanmar Open Type Font (Myanmar1) [1]
• MPH Yangon [2]
• MyMyanmar Unicode System [3]

Contents 1 Semi-Unicode- Faked Unicode 1.1 Advantages 1.2 Disadvantages 2 Unicode block + additional glyphs 2.1 Advantages 2.2 Disadvantages 3 Fully Unicode compliant 3.1 Advantages 3.2 Disadvantages 3.3 Examples 3.4 Solutions 4 Dynamic PNGs 4.1 Advantages 4.2 Disadvantages 5 Other external links

[edit] Semi-Unicode- Faked Unicode

Sites like http://www.planet.com.mm/ use fonts that will allow something like pmtkyf? to be typed in, but manage to read with partial Unicode-compliant fonts mainly because websites like this are constructed with partially-compliant Unicode fonts.More discussions at http://www.planet.com.mm/forums/topic.cfm?forum_id=78&Topic_Id=48250 with appealing graphics

[edit] Advantages

• Needs to have one partially-compliant Unicode standardized font. (It is better to have one fully-compliant Unicode font than a partial one.)

[edit] Disadvantages

• Since there are numerous non-standardized Burmese fonts still available from the early days, though now becoming obsolete, many old Burmese websites, built with these particular fonts, are compelled to provide free download of the font they use so that visitors will be able to see and read the text. This is unnecessarily difficult for website visitors.
• Hard to display other languages (using CSS, however, it may be easier with <div class="english"> tags).
• Needs a specific font.
• Displays as gibberish if the required font is not installed.

[edit] Unicode block + additional glyphs

For instance, the font MyaZedi (partially-compliant) has some Unicode characters in the correct blocks, with additional glyphs added for accents.

• Will display as squares if font not installed. စာအုပ္၊
• Can be (nearly, so far) one-for-one transliterated from the non-Unicode font. [4]
• Can be transliterated into fully-compliant Unicode (although conversion not as simple).

[edit] Advantages

• Only one fully-compliant Myanmar Unicode to use for website builders, emailers and websurfers.
• Now, multiplatform, multilingual, full Graphite-enabled Office suite-tested with Graphite Unicode Myanmar font from Open Office. OpenOffice ver 2.0.0 is available free.
• One can write letters, do databases or spreadsheets with a fully-compliant Burmese font that can be viewed, edited or printed easily by others using the same applications.

[edit] Disadvantages

• Needs a specific font (for many of the non-Unicode characters).
• For Internet Explorer to work, character set must be x-user-defined (rather than utf-8). This means that the UTF-8-encoded HTML must be converted to the &# format before being sent to the browser.

[edit] Fully Unicode compliant

SIL [5] uses Graphite fonts, which contain information on how they should change dependent on the characters preceding them. The fonts are available free from here (direct download): http://downloads.mozdev.org/sila/fonts/padaukg.zip

[edit] Advantages

• Works with an OpenType font, and updated usp10.dll.
• Can use with application software (Note: Only with true, fully Unicode-compliant Graphite fonts, i.e-Padauk Gr Font, Graphite-font supported Open Office ver 2.0.0 [[OpenOffice.org], Mozilla's Sila-build Firefox ver 1.5 and Thunderbird][6]
• Developed by a dedicated group specializing in font development, such as www.sil.org
• Supported by OS-Linux, FreeBSD, Apple OS 9 and OS X, and recent Windows versions (above ver 2000 Pro)
• Fast becoming indispensable for those who use the Burmese language

[edit] Disadvantages

• Different from the usual glyph-based method of entering text.
• Although Internet Explorer is notoriously nonstandard, people who want to use this browser might write to Microsoft urging full support for CSS as well as support for fully-compliant Myanmar Unicode fonts.

[edit] Examples

• This is a Unicode string: မဟာဓမ္မရာဇာမ္‌ပတိ
• XenoType should display it properly as:
• In the Graphite-enabled word processors WorldPad and OpenOffice ver 2.0, as well as Mozilla's Sila-build Firefox and Thunderbird, it displays correctly as: -
• Using MPH Yangon, with an up-to-date usp10.dll, it's:

• Mozilla with Code2000 installed will show:
• With Code2000, and an old version of Uniscribe, you can see a character is not displaying under another one.

Wikipedia:Comparison of proper Unicode and Unicode glyphs

[edit] Solutions

It looks like using Node ue's font, MPH Yangon, along with an up-to-date usp10.dll (Uniscribe, which handles Windows font display) will fix the problems, so we can use proper Unicode without resorting to hacks.

[edit] Dynamic PNGs

This is used at http://www.bagan.net.mm/ to display Burmese.

[edit] Advantages

• No requirement at all for a font that displays Myanmar characters.
• Viewable by anyone with a graphical browser.

[edit] Disadvantages

• Increased bandwidth and CPU use.
• Not a solution for editing.
• Impossible to copy and paste as text.
• Just one fixed size.

[edit] Other external links

• OS X support for Burmese script. (This looks fully Unicode compliant)
• Google search about Graphite and Mozilla.
• Electronic Burmese Bibles with Full Unicode
• Win Myanmar Fonts De facto standard Myanmar fonts. 86 typefaces. But not Unicode yet.(will never become Unicode font,safely say obsolete font)