FIO: Gurmukhi Unicode fonts

[DavidHaslam]

This issue is made to record information about Gurmukhi Unicode fonts.

Windows will normally have some Gurmukhi fonts pre-installed, such as:

• Arial Unicode MS
• Raavi

The fonts designed by James Kass cover most of the Unicode BMP and beyond:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code2000 (readily available in many download sites)

Here are links to some further useful resources here:

• http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/available/gurmukhi/ (South Asia Language Resource Center)
• https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-guru (doesn't also support English)
• http://www.gurbanifiles.org/unicode/ (a variety of fonts & keyboards here)
• http://www.bhupi.ca/saab/ (OpenType font for Punjabi)
• http://fonts.webtoolhub.com/?prefix=gurmukhi+lipi+punjabi++unicode+font (font aggregator site)

In the nature of things, there's some overlap in the above list.

[DavidHaslam]

Raavi supports both English and Punjabi.

It's pre-installed with Windows. It's probably the most suitable Gurmukhi font for ordinary Windows users. I propose that we specify this in the SWORD module .conf file.

Raavi™ is an OpenType font for the Indic script Gurmukhi, used to write Punjabi. Raavi is based on Unicode, contains TrueType outlines and was designed by Raghunath Joshi (Type Design Director) and Apurva Joshi for use as a UI font. Copyright ™ 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Character Set: Latin-1, Gurmukhi (Punjabi).

For other platforms, users will need to decide for themselves what's the best font to use with the SWORD module.

[DavidHaslam]

When we've discussed this topic adequately, it would be sensible to record our conclusions in a wiki page.

[DavidHaslam]

The Raavi font does not support the Unicode thin space character U+2009 nor any of the other special space characters between U+2000 and U+200B.

If we decide to make use of any such spaces, I will change the recommended font to Free Sans next time I build the SWORD module.