Updates to Sans and Serif sources

[ohbendy]

Both Serif and Sans

Glyphs

• Added characters for Unicodes 12 and 15: gha-lao cha-lao jha-lao nya-lao tta-lao ttha-lao dda-lao ddha-lao nna-lao dha-lao bha-lao sha-lao ssa-lao lla-lao virama-lao and yamakkan-lao

• Marks now all have 50 units on each sidebearing so can be edited easily in Glyphs without all overlapping. Glyphs zeroes the widths of marks on export.

• Removed amVowel-lao.narrow as nikkahita will always be dynamically positioned on anchors. (If we don't decompose it, tracking and kerning will disturb the position of the nikkahita.)

• Synchronised niggahita_tonemark and niggahita_tonemark.right ligatures (the shape and position of tonemarks was differing in e.g ກ້ຳ vs ກໍ້)

Anchors

• Moved bottom anchors on loVowel and loVowel.narrow to keep any marks below aligned consistently.

• Corrected bottom anchor on koKai in thin compressed master.

• Corrected anchors on dottedCircle to keep marks consistent with each other and with their position on letters.

• renamed top2 anchors to topright (top2 was the topright in the serif and the top in the sans)

OpenType

• Refactored OT code completely to tidy up and remove bugs.

• subscript Lo was disabling contextual centring of vowels, e.g ເກຼັ and contextual narrow marks e.g ປຼ້ຳ ປຼິ ຢຼັ

PS Hints

• Set alignment zones correctly for Lao: x-height is the body height; Lao TopTopMarks bottom aligns the baseline of the top tier tonemarks; Lao Topmarks Bottom aligns the baseline of the marks above a consonant. Serif has a zone for numeral height; in the sans the numerals are the same height as the letters.
• Added Family Alignment Zones

• One vertical and one horizontal stem weight set for each master (values cannot be zero) - Manually set hints on stems in every glyph for best results - Added 'Get Hints from Master' parameter

  Sans

  Glyphs

  • Corrected crossbar in black master of khmuNyo-lao to keep angled head consistent with other masters and with khmuGo-lao. Pali letters Sha and Ssa keep the same shape.
  • Added top anchor to abovevowels so that nikkahit can attach above them (e.g in Pali)
  • synced rsb of woWi-lao cha-lao and oO-lao to coCok-lao, and added a negative kern when followed by saraAa.
  • Reduced lsb of saraAa-lao in bold condensed master (it was a lot larger than the non-condensed). Same with rsb of saraE/saraAe and tall vowels.
    • kerned saraE-lao with coCok-lao. SaraAe and tall vowel signs in same kern group
    • Removed ligatures of nikkahita_tonemark.narrow since they aren't used
    • Angled handles of ອ fixed; handles of ໑ equalised.
    • Body height and overshoots made consistent throughout (several glyphs were slightly different heights)

Anchors

• moved bottom anchor of thoThong-lao left to match same distance in soSang-lao, jha-lao and ttha-lao - renamed top and top2 anchors to topright and top (top and top2 were the opposite way round as in the serif) - topright anchor of ປຝຟຢ moved to consistent position so marks like nikkahit.narrow or maiTho.narrow keep same gaps (ປໍ and ປ້ had marks much closer to ascender than the other letters)

Serif

• Made body height / overshoots consistent (there were discrepancies notably in ໗໘ and ໆ)

[simoncozens]

Thanks for this. I am just testing it for shaping differences; the sans looks fine, but I noticed a couple of oddities in the serif. Before:

After:

Text is:

ລ໌ຳ ເໜົ່າໆ

[simoncozens]

(I suspect the second one is an improvement, and the first one is not)

[ohbendy]

Wow, thanks for finding those! Let me fix a bit :)

Ok the first one is a bad anchor name. Now that's updated all those combinations work beautifully. Here is ກໍ່ ກໍ້ ກໍ໊ ກໍ໋ ກໍ໌ ກ່ຳ ກ້ຳ ກ໊ຳ ກ໋ຳ ກ໌ຳ

The second/third ones are where the ligatures with nikahit are all slightly improved. There were inconsistencies in some masters between the default and the .right versions, and IIRC the .small tonemarks in some of those ligatures were slightly different from the outlines in the non-ligature .small tonemarks. Now the tonemarks should always sit at the same height.

The fourth one is where the abovevowel should have been pulled to the left in the context of a pre-base vowel, but that wasn't happening before. Now the ligatures ho-no and ho-mo are included in the class of base consonants so the behaviour of marks on them follows what happens on other consonants. Pushing now.