[mpeg-OTspec] Re: Updates to script and language tags

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

Thank you John,

I think the issues you brought up are important to address but they seem to require quite a bit of further discussions and work. I doubt that simply adding new tags would solve it by itself, we also need to understand the differences between languages and document them properly so that the companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Monotype (and many independent font vendors) would know what the problems are and how to solve them, what is required of implementations, etc. The lack of this understanding is what may have been hampered the progress on this issue - we definitely need to continue this discussion to find a solution.

Thank you,
Vlad


From: John Hopkins [mailto:jdhopkins8791 at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 5:11 PM
To: Levantovsky, Vladimir
Cc: mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [mpeg-OTspec] Re: Updates to script and language tags

Vlad,

That would be great! I understand. Thank you! Sorry about the lateness... and there is just one more thing that you might discuss in your meeting, or that Microsoft and Adobe should be aware of - regarding Armenian:

For many years we have been dealing with distinctions between Armenian East (used inside Armenia) vs. Armenian West (used outside of Armenia, including the US). There are many differences between these two forms of the language and how they affect font glyphs. Our company's linguists say that Microsoft and Adobe products only use rules corresponding to Armenian West, but our needs are for Armenian East. So we have built fonts that favor the latter, which we use in-house for our own publications. But we also have older publications that are supposed to use the Armenian West. So we really need both.

There is no distinction between these two variants of Armenian using ISO 639-3 exclusively. Nor are there really any clear distinctions in OpenType's language tags. In the OpenType Spec, there is a script tag 'armn' and a language tag 'HYE ' for Armenian. There is also the 'dflt' language tag. We could really use a standard way of handling font glyph differences between these two variants of Armenian within OpenType. We have observed that under the 'armn' script tag, that both the 'dflt' and 'HYE ' tags use Armenian West rules in Microsoft and Adobe products. Perhaps an additional OpenType tag of 'HYE2' or 'HYEE' could be added that would correspond to Armenian East rules. (Another possibility is to use 'HYE ' for Armenian East and 'HYEW' for Armenian West. It does not really matter to us, as long there is a clear distinction in the OTSpec).

Again, thank you for your help. We have not known exactly who to turn to, to resolve these issues, though we have brought them up to both Microsoft and Adobe in years past, unfortunately without success. Maybe you and this group can help.

Best regards,
John D. Hopkins

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Levantovsky, Vladimir <Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com<mailto:Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com>> wrote:
John,

It's really not up to me to decide (and it is a bit late to change the input contribution document I already submitted) but if I do not receive any objections from other participants on this list I can definitely present your contribution at the meeting next week.

If anyone has any objections or corrections to the list of languages and language tags proposed by John - please speak up no later than Monday, Jan. 21st. Silence is approval.

Thank you,
Vlad


From: mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com<mailto:mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com> [mailto:mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com<mailto:mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com>] On Behalf Of John Hopkins
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:20 PM
To: mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com<mailto:mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [mpeg-OTspec] Re: Updates to script and language tags




Would Vlad be kindly willing to include these also in his document?



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