Syriac vowel-signs

[Jericho]

This is my first go with VOLT, and I hope you will excuse me if this is an elementary problem. I'll be grateful for any help.

I have adapted an existing Syriac font, adding 10 new vowel-signs. In VOLT, all the lookups associated with these new signs look correct. I proofed them and they correctly jump up or down into their proper places above or below the letters. That seems fine. But when the .ttf font is moved into the fonts folder and I type some Syriac in Word, the new vowel-signs aren't recognized. They just sit on the base-line (where they also spoil the connectivity of the letters they apply to). The vowels in the original font are treated correctly.

In case this is relevant: the new signs have Unicode values U+05bc, and then U+e001 - U+e009 (i.e. from the private-use area).

Possibly this is not a problem with VOLT at all, but something in Windows? I am using Windows Vista, with Microsoft Office XP.

Chip Coakley
The Jericho Press
 

[Lorna]

Uniscribe does not support shaping in the private use area so that will not work. Also, I suspect since U+05BC is from the Hebrew block that uniscribe would not support shaping between the two scripts. If these are characters that are indeed Syriac you need to propose their addition to Unicode.

[Jericho]

Dear Lorna,

Thank you for the definitive reply. At least I know there is no point in pursuing this font. But I am surprised at this obstacle, which I wasn't aware of.

Adding new characters to a complex-script font and getting them to join up properly would seem a reasonable thing to do - without having to go to Unitype to explain oneself. I wonder if others have been frustrated in the same way.

If I'm to have my extra vowel-signs in the short term, it looks as if I shall have to put them into Syriac Unicode slots under false numbers. The existing font has quite a few otiose ones. I suppose this will work? Not very pretty, though.

Chip Coakley

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