Re: Tamil fonts

[Visuwesh <visuweshm@gmail.com>]

[வெள்ளி ஜூன் 03, 2022] Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> From: समीर सिंह Sameer Singh <lumarzeli30@gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2022 17:46:10 +0530
>> Cc: Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org, Visuwesh <visuweshm@gmail.com>
>> 
>> Great! I will send them in two different bug reports.
>
> Thanks.
>
>> I think we should also warn users that if they are trying to change the tamil font in their init.el, they should use
>> codepoints instead of the script name,
>> in the (set-fontset-font) function, because if their font does not support the supplement characters, they will
>> once more be displayed as "tofu".
>
> [...]
>
> (Personally, I find it strange that a Tamil font doesn't support the
> Supplement block, and even more strange that Google created a separate
> font instead of extending an existing one.  Perhaps this is because
> the Tamil Supplement block is relatively new.)

Probably because most of the characters added are historic, for a lack
of a better word.  I have never seen them used in practise and I doubt
most Tamil speakers know about them either: maybe if you were old, you
might have used it and/or heard about it [1].  Considering this, I don't
think most font maintainers/creators would have the supplement
characters in high priority list.

Also, these characters were added in Unicode 12.0.

[1] FWIW, even my mother did not know about it.