[Debian-in-workers] Bug#661923: Bug#661923: Rachana Malayalam font has wrong glyph for 0D66 MALAYALAM DIGIT ZERO

Santhosh Thottingal santhosh.thottingal at gmail.com
Sat Mar 3 04:13:29 UTC 2012


On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 10:28 PM, Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Package: ttf-malayalam-fonts
> Version: 1:0.5.14
>
> The Rachana Malayalam font that is distributed with Debian shows the
> wrong glyph for 0D66 MALAYALAM DIGIT ZERO.
>
> I have separately reported bug #661905 that this font displays many
> encoded characters wrongly as ® or as full stop. Those are purely bad
> glyphs intended as fillers which should be removed. However this is a
> different bug.
>
> The glyph already existing in the font for 0D66 MALAYALAM DIGIT ZERO
> is actually that of the later encoded 0D73 MALAYALAM FRACTION ONE
> QUARTER. Previously the old Unicode chart had this wrong glyph,
> however the current chart has been updated to show the actual
> Malayalam digit zero which is just like the other zeroes of (South)
> Indian scripts: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D00.pdf

Please consider this as a style variation of that glyph chosen by the
designers.  Have a close look at zero glyph and fraction one quarter
glyph, they are not same, the quarter glyph has a long tail and small
round shape in left part.

The zero with out full circle and small tail was chosen after studying
palm leaves and old printing. If you use a stylus and write a full
circle in a palm leaf, if the pressure applied is a bit more , the
result will be a hole in the leaf. So zero used to be written in palm
leaves without a full circle. Exceptions are also there. In old
printing zero used to write using full circle. So the current glyph
used is not accidental, just a conscious style variation design by
designer.

Thanks
Santhosh





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