Re: Thai fonts small compared to regular characters

["Edward H. Trager" <ehtrager umich edu>]

Hi, Theppitak,

While I understand your explanation, the "Loma" font still seems much
larger compared to Norasi and Garuda font families. 

If I am not mistaken, Loma is also a NECTEC freely-distributable font, is
that correct?  What license exactly is NECTEC using to release these
fonts?

Also, it would be nice if there was a single, standard, stable URL where
people worldwide could download the NECTEC fonts.  I could not find them
anywhere on the NECTEC site.  Finally I found most of the Garuda/Norasi/Loma
fonts on OpenTLE.org (at the URL mentioned in my previous posting to this
list), but I don't know if that is really a permanent URL. ( I know at least
one very large Linux distributor obtains the Thai fonts by pulling them out
of the RPM of one of the Thai Linux distributions).

On Saturday 2004.07.24 22:54:10 +0700, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 01:48:29PM +0200, Ruben Vermeersch wrote:
> > On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 13:48:52 +0200, Pablo Saratxaga
> > <pablo mandrakesoft com> wrote:
> > > Kaixo!
> > >
> > > On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 01:12:53PM +0200, Ruben Vermeersch wrote:
> > > >
> > > > display of thai fonts on my gnome desktop. For some reason, thai fonts
> > > > are rendered a lot smaller then regular characters. Since the regular
> > >
> > > > http://files.lambda1.be/screenshots/thai.png
> > >
> > > Could it be you are using the "Norasi" thai fonts?
> > >
> > > If yes; the problem is in the fonts themselves.
> > >
> > > If someone know of better freely distributable fonts for Thai
> > > I'll be happy to hear about it.
> > >
> > > Or maybe is there a possibility to cheat with fontconfig (eg tell
> > > fontconfig that when user requests size "x", then size "x+4" has to
> > > be used instead).
> > >
> > 
> > Most of my thai fonts come from http://linux.thai.net
> > 
> > But i have no idea which font my X uses
> 
> The font in the screenshot appears to be TLWG PseudoMono.
> 
> I would like to say, the relatively small size is currently inevitable,
> unless the same font is chosen to render both Thai and English
> characters.
> 
> The reason is that Thai font designs have to reserve upper and lower
> space for placing combining characters [1]. So, with the same point size,
> Thai base characters are always smaller than those of typical Latin fonts.
> This is true for other multi-level scripts, such as Laos, Khmer, Tibetan
> as well. However, those fonts always provide English glyphs with proper
> relative size. So, if the same font is chosen, the relative size would fit
> well.
> 
> On the other hand, some fonts, such as FreeSerif, try to cope with this
> problem by scaling up Thai glyphs instead, letting the upper/lower marks
> be placed beyond the ascender/descender. While this works in some
> cases, the marks just get clipped in some others. Breaking the rule is
> always not safe.
> 
> So, the ideal is to extend the "point size" definition to cover other
> scripts than Latin as well.
> 
> Regarding the fontconfig cheat, this is what I have tried to do, without
> success. As a rule of thumb, an English font of n points is suitable with
> Thai font with n*1.3 points.
> 
> Reference:
> [1] Thai font standardization working group. Recommendations for Thai
>     font construction. (in Thai) pp. 80.
>     http://www.swpark.or.th/opensource/download/Thaifont%20for%20Linux3.pdf
> 
> Regards,
> -Thep.
> -- 
> Theppitak Karoonboonyanan
> http://linux.thai.net/~thep/
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