[HarfBuzz] Fwd: hindi problem

[Jonathan Kew]

On 06/12/2017 09:34, Jani Brezavšček wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm writing because I can't find a solution to my problem.. I would like 
> to display the following hindi text as it is written bellow or e.g. in 
> google search bar
> 
> शक्ति (I put it in google translate and it looks like it means "power" in 
> hindi)
> 
> with the line above the characters (starting at second one) going above 
> from the second character to the last one. But what I get after using 
> harfbuzz is not the same... the last two characters get merged into one 
> and it does not look like what I pasted
> 
> I've checked it with Sanskrit2003.ttf and NotoSansDevanagari-Medium.ttf 
> they both produce the same abomination
> 
> Can anyone please help me understand if this is a bug in harfbuzz or if 
> I am doing something wrong?
> 

I guess you're confused by the rendering of the combination "क्त" (ka, 
virama, ta). This pair of consonants ("kt") can be written either with a 
half-ka followed by ta, or as a single conjunct glyph. Which is used is 
a stylistic choice the font designer will have made.

Most fonts I've seen go for the single-glyph "kt" conjunct, although the 
Mangal and Nirmala UI fonts from Windows choose the longer "half-ka + 
ta" rendering, so if that's what you're comparing to, you may be 
surprised by the conjunct in other fonts.

See 
http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p276561/html/section67.html 
(scroll down to section 7, "Some forms are completely different...", and 
note the two examples of the "kt" combination).

In short: how it looks depends on the font you choose.

JK