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Unicode 17 includes a change that may improve line breaking, backspacing, and other behavior for Khmer, Myanmar, and twelve other Brahmic scripts: Extended grapheme cluster breaks, which may be used in such processes to identify “characters”, no longer occur within sequences of a conjoiner and a consonant in these scripts. Such sequences represent conjunct forms that users see as indivisible entities.
See
https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/tr44-36.html#Derivation_InCB
After Safari and Chromium-based browsers, now Firefox finally also provides correct line breaking at orthographic syllable boundaries for several Brahmic scripts such as Balinese and Javanese. This style of line breaking was originally proposed in
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22080r2-line-break-ortho-bnd.pdf
and standardized in Unicode 15.1
https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/tr14-51.html
The screen shots show line breaking for Balinese in the past and the present. The text is supposed to stay inside the box.
New article:
Order and disorder in Unicode
The Unicode Standard lacks well-defined encoding orders for the orthographic syllables of Brahmic scripts. This creates problems such as missing search results, incorrectly rendered text, and security holes. This article discusses the causes of these problems and various localized attempts at solving them. It proposes a new form of normalization as a more generic solution.
New article: Introduction to Brahmic scripts
…covering their usage for major languages, their characteristics as an abugida, the formation of orthographic syllables, and layout issues.
Updated article: Encoding orders of Brahmic scripts
Documents the encoding orders that the OpenType Universal Shaping Engine assumes for the Brahmic scripts it supports. Understanding encoding orders is necessary when rendering or otherwise interpreting text in these scripts, as well es when entering text using input methods or otherwise generating text.
Updated for Unicode 16.0 and latest USE documentation and data.
https://lontar.eu/en/notes/encoding-orders-of-brahmic-scripts/
So nice to see that Safari now provides correct line breaking for Balinese, Javanese, and other scripts, as proposed in
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22080r2-line-break-ortho-bnd.pdf
Screen shots show line breaking for Balinese in iOS 17.3 and today’s iOS 17.4. The text is supposed to stay inside the box.
New article: Encoding orders of Brahmic scripts
Documents the encoding orders that the OpenType Universal Shaping Engine assumes for the Brahmic scripts it supports. Understanding encoding orders is necessary when rendering or otherwise interpreting text in these scripts, as well es when entering text using input methods or otherwise generating text.
https://lontar.eu/en/notes/encoding-orders-of-brahmic-scripts/
iOS 17 finally includes a font for the Batak script that renders text as required by the Unicode Standard: In the word “ᯖᯪᯇ᯲” , the vowel “◌ᯪ” must be shown after the final consonant “ᯇ” even though it’s pronounced and encoded before it. The font is the current release of Google’s Noto Sans Batak, which has adopted the implementation technique I developed in “Constructing fonts for the Batak script”.
Aditya Bayu Perdana illuminates use of Balinese musical symbols and non-use of Sasak characters in new Unicode Technical Note:
Jikji, the oldest surviving document that was printed with movable metal type, 1377 in Cheongju, Korea, is currently on display as part of the exhibition “Imprimer ! L’Europe de Gutenberg” at the Bibliothèque national de France in Paris.
