Incomplete 'ss01' and 'ss03' in Noto Sans Kaithi

[dscorbett]

Font

NotoSansKaithi-Regular.ttf

Where the font came from, and when

Site: https://github.com/googlei18n/noto-fonts/blob/85e78f831469323c85847e23f95026c894159135/hinted/NotoSansKaithi-Regular.ttf
Date: 2018-12-02

Font version

Version 2.000;GOOG;noto-source:20181019:f8f3770;ttfautohint (v1.8.2)

Issue

Noto Sans Kaithi’s 'ss01' and 'ss03' don’t cover the variations described in L2/08-194, and what they do cover isn’t internally consistent.

'ss01' replaces a and ṇa with variant forms, leaving out the similar glyphs ā, o, au, ṇī, ṇu, ṇū, and the half form ṇ. 'ss03' replaces ṇī with its variant form, but the other ṇa-based glyphs still don’t get any variants. Splitting up the variants between 'ss01' and 'ss03' does not seem useful, unless 'ss01' was meant to just be for a and ṇa was meant to go in 'ss03'.

L2/08-194, p. 37 lists some letters with variants, most of which are not supported in this font – not that that’s required, but given that there are these stylistic sets it is odd they are so minimal. It also says that some variants are associated with specific languages (Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Maithili), so instead of or as well as the stylistic sets the font could select variants using the language codes 'BHO ', 'MAG ', and 'MTH '.

Character data

𑂃𑂄𑂋𑂌
U+11083 KAITHI LETTER A
U+11084 KAITHI LETTER AA
U+1108B KAITHI LETTER O
U+1108C KAITHI LETTER AU
𑂝𑂝𑂲𑂝𑂳𑂝𑂴𑂝𑂹𑂗
U+1109D KAITHI LETTER NNA
U+1109D KAITHI LETTER NNA
U+110B2 KAITHI VOWEL SIGN II
U+1109D KAITHI LETTER NNA
U+110B3 KAITHI VOWEL SIGN U
U+1109D KAITHI LETTER NNA
U+110B4 KAITHI VOWEL SIGN UU
U+1109D KAITHI LETTER NNA
U+110B9 KAITHI SIGN VIRAMA
U+11097 KAITHI LETTER TTA

Screenshot

[marekjez86]

should be fixed in OTF: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/tree/master/phaseIII_only/unhinted/otf/NotoSansKaithi and TTF: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/tree/master/phaseIII_only/unhinted/ttf/NotoSansKaithi

[dscorbett]

U+1108B KAITHI LETTER O and U+1108C KAITHI LETTER AU are still unaffected by 'ss01'.

[dscorbett]

@marekjez86, please reopen this. The fix was incomplete.

[SKing-2003]

The variant glyphs are not in the font and will require drawing.