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Scribus => Text and Typography => Topic started by: birdbrain on November 10, 2011, 10:35:50 PM

Title: Tibetan rendering
Post by: birdbrain on November 10, 2011, 10:35:50 PM
Hello,

Has anyone out there had success in using render frames to correctly render Tibetan fonts?  Which render editor did you use?  My colleague is the one who can actually read and write Tibetan, I am simply doing page layout from afar.  I wonder if I will be able to do this on my own?

tnx
Title: Re: Tibetan rendering
Post by: John_Jason_Jordan on November 11, 2011, 02:36:43 AM
Quote from: birdbrain on November 10, 2011, 10:35:50 PMHas anyone out there had success in using render frames to correctly render Tibetan fonts?  Which render editor did you use?  My colleague is the one who can actually read and write Tibetan, I am simply doing page layout from afar.  I wonder if I will be able to do this on my own?

I don't speak Tibetan or know the details of its writing system, but I do know some basics. Tibetan is written with an abugida, and an odd one at that. Text is written from right to left, but syllables are written from left to right. Each consonant glyph can have subscripts and superscripts, sometimes both, which are used to indicate vowels, nasals and liquids. Writing Tibetan on a computer is a great challenge, and I'm pretty sure Scribus does not support it. For that matter, I don't know of any layout programs that do. Having said that, if Latex can do Tibetan you could lay out the text using Scribus render frames. But you might find it simpler just to do the project in Latex.

I would suggest starting by reading up on the Tibetan writing system and the Tibetan language in general.