Re: [Freebangfont-devel] Re: HELP

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thursday 22 May 2003 09:13 am, Kaushik Ghose wrote:
> The encoding that Lekho uses for bangla is unicode
> (http://www.unicode.org) This has become the most widely
> adopted character coding standard for international text. It
> has drawbacks and limitations, 

What are they?

> but as far as bangla goes I'd
> say it is the best solution in the context of multi script
> text.
>
> The encoding that Ekushey and MS word uses for bangla, that
> you are using, is as far as I understand NOT unicode.
> Basically ms word documents store font information with the
> actual text. So word/ekushey do not encode bangla as unicode,
> but use an arbitrary code and a font to render bangla.

Word can use Unicode for Bangla, but if you use a font in another 
encoding, Word cannot tell by itself what it is supposed to be. 
However, if you tell Word to load a file and interpret it as a 
certain encoding, and then tell Word to save it as Unicode, it 
will do so..

> This means that typing bangla with the ekushey fonts and
> saving the text as a .doc document will let only ms word (and
> perhaps Open office) read that document, and not as unicode
> bangla , but as tetx in a paticulr font (supplied with
> Ekushey)

Actually, there are many text editors and word processors that 
can read this encoding. Some of them can handle character code 
conversion as well as Word.

> Lekho CAN NOT read .doc files

You can save documents from Word as text files.

> Saving a bangla document in Lekho will let you read it in a
> program that supports unicode AND implements the standard
> rigourously. I hear the latest versions of microsoft word do
> this.
>
> 2.
> BUT you need at least one bangla open type font to be able to
> see this text. Bangla open type fonts are available here
>
> http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont/downloads.html
>
> Ekushe will NOT (as far as I know) be able to help you edit
> unicode documents. Ekushey does not use unicode.

If the font specifiies its encoding correctly, Word and other 
Windows programs can use it to display files encoded in Unicode.

> My suggestion, if you are not worried about your encoding
> standard, and are most concerned about the layout of what you
> type is to use Ekushey and MS word and ask for help from Robin
> Upton (the creater of Ekushey) to modify the key map to suit
> you more
>
> thanks
> -kaushik

-- 
Edward Cherlin, Simputer Evangelist
Encore Technologies (S) Pte. Ltd.
Computers for all of us
http://www.simputerland.com, http://cherlin.blogspot.com