Re: No malayalam glyphs in language/mlm-util.el

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

Still no success.

Still using, today's CVS snapshot, Fri, 2003 Feb 14 13:31 UTC GNU
Emacs 21.3.50.146 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit) started with

     /usr/local/bin/emacs -q --no-site-file --eval '(blink-cursor-mode 0)'

   > ...I see empty boxes when I visit
   >
   >     emacs/lisp/language/mlm-util.el

   AFAI can make out, the variables 'malayalam-consonant' and the regexp
   in 'malayalam-composable-pattern' use Unicode.  You need an Unicode
   font that has glyphs in that range.  If your default font doesn't
   have the correct stuff, you'll need in your .emacs

     (set-fontset-font (query-fontset (frame-parameter nil 'font))
         (cons (decode-char 'ucs ?\x0D00) (decode-char 'ucs ?\x0D7f))
         (cons "monotype-arial unicode ms" "iso10646-1"))

I just started a fresh Emacs, evaluated that expression in it, and visited
emacs/lisp/language/mlm-util.el

No success.  Same problem as before: empty boxes.


   You can use any font that has Malayalam, ...

Such as...?    please tell me a URL that I can download.

After downloading and unpacking into directory foobar/, 
I presume I then do:

    mkfontdir
    xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/foobar/
    xset fp rehash

Is that right?

(If that is right and you tell me a URL and it all works, I will
write up a short example of what to do.)


   Scrolling further, you should see that 'mlm-char-glyph' has empty
   boxes on the LHS of the table, but there must be proper glyphs on the
   RHS -- those RHS entries are from the "malayalam-cdac" fonts.

Yes, that is the case:  empty boxes on the left hand side and proper
glyphs on the RHS


   Overall, the whole workflow of editing Unicode encoded Indic documents
   in Emacs is not very smooth yet.

In this case, the bug seems to be a lack of the kind of documentation
that I (and others like me) will notice, understand, and follow.

In particular, the current bug is documentation on why, when, and how
to install fonts.  This is is not an Emacs question, but is more
general.  However, if Emacs lacks fonts, it breaks.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             bob@rattlesnake.com