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Dai Banna SIL Fonts

Adrian Cheuk, 2011-03-19; 26445 reads

Contents of this page:

    Introduction
    System Requirements
    License
    SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE
    Download and Installation
    Previous Versions
    Support

Introduction

Dai Banna SIL is a Unicode font package for rendering New Tai Lue (Xishuangbanna Dai) characters.1 It includes a complete set of New Tai Lue consonants, vowels, tones, and digits, along with punctuation and other useful symbols. A basic set of Latin glyphs, including Arabic numerals, is also provided. Apart from a few New Tai Lue characters and Chinese punctuation marks, the design is the same as its predecessor, SIL Dai Banna Fonts. Two font families, differing only in weight, allow for a wide range of uses.

Dai Banna SIL Light

Dai Banna SIL Book

The New Tai Lue script is used by approximately 300,000 people who speak the Xishuangbanna Dai language in Yunnan, China. It is a simplification of the Tai Tham (Old Tai Lue) script as used for this language for hundreds of years.

We particularly thank the Dai News Department of Xishuangbanna Daily for valuable advice during the development of this Unicode font package. Xishuangbanna Daily, established since 1957, is the largest newspaper company in Yunnan, China that publishes in the New Tai Lue script.

System Requirements

The Dai Banna SIL fonts are designed to work on operating systems that provide support for TrueType fonts and for Unicode character encoding. This includes Microsoft Windows® 9x or greater, Mac OS version 9.0 and later, and some implementations of Unix / Linux. (TrueType font support on Unix and Linux may depend upon the particular applications in use.)

The above only describes the minimum needed to display characters. For the fonts to work properly in applications, additional requirements must be met. This release of the fonts is designed to work with Graphite, a smart font technology that enables the visual reordering of four vowels to the left of the base consonant:

USV	Glyph	Unicode Name
U+19B5		NEW TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN E
U+19B6		NEW TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN AE
U+19B7		NEW TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN O
U+19BA		NEW TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN AY

Visual reordering is required to display them properly in relation to the base consonant because, according to the Unicode Standard, the New Tai Lue script is encoded after a logical ordering, i.e., consonants are always stored before vowels. Without visual reordering, the above four vowels will be displayed after the base consonant, which is incorrect according to standard usage of the script.

Graphite also allows smart line breaking that limits break opportunities to between syllables only. This is useful because intersyllabic space is optional in New Tai Lue text, and without space marking syllable boundaries, standard applications will just break the line whenever it is full, likely splitting up a syllable, which is undesirable as per standard script usage.

To correctly render a run of text with reordrant vowels and no intersyllabic space, you must be using applications and/or operating systems that provide an adequate level of support for Graphite.2 Tested applications / operating systems which make use of the Graphite capabilities of the fonts include:

SIL WorldPad 2.4 & 2.8 (Windows)
OpenOffice Writer 3.2.1 (cross-platform)
gedit 2.30.3 (Ubuntu Linux with pango-graphite 0.9.3-0.1)

More information on Graphite technology and related applications is available at Graphite.

License

Dai Banna SIL is released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) - please read it carefully and do not download the font unless you agree to the terms of the license.

License details:

This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at http://scripts.sil.org/OFL.

SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE

Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007

PREAMBLE

The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of collaborative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others.

The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any software provided that any reserved names are not used by derivative works. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the fonts or their derivatives.

DEFINITIONS

"Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright Holder(s) under this license and clearly marked as such. This may include source files, build scripts and documentation.

"Reserved Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the copyright statement(s).

"Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed by the Copyright Holder(s).

"Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting, or substituting — in part or in whole — any of the components of the Original Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a new environment.

"Author" refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical writer or other person who contributed to the Font Software.

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following conditions:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user.

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as presented to the users.

4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or the Author(s) of the Font Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) and the Author(s) or with their explicit written permission.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the Font Software.

TERMINATION

This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are not met.

DISCLAIMER

THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

Download and Installation

If you agree to the terms of use (described above), you may download the font package from one of the following links:

Dai Banna SIL 2.200 (official release)

Dai Banna SIL 2.200 font release (ZIP archive, MD5 hash: b6501ebc574d25d687bc9f0ac5a38a30)
Adrian Cheuk, 2011-03-18
Download "DaiBanna-2.200.zip", ZIP archive, 593KB [2213 downloads]

The font release contains a set of eight font files and documentation. (NB: No keyboard is provided.) You will need a decompression utility to expand the .zip archive. The font files can then be installed using standard font installation procedures for the given operating-system platform. See Decompression Utilities, Downloading & Installation Tips for more information.

Note that certain applications may not see the new fonts immediately. You may have to quit and restart the application for the fonts to become available.

Dai Banna SIL 2.200 font release (Windows installer, MD5 hash: cfbc51f379dbd47dcf472524720f82d1)
Adrian Cheuk, 2011-03-18
Download "DaiBanna-2.200.exe", Windows application, 629KB [1012 downloads]

This package contains the same files as DaiBanna-2.200.zip. This installer is only for Windows users. After downloading the package, you can double-click on it and follow the on-screen instructions to install the font files and documentation.

Note that certain applications may not see the new fonts immediately. You may have to quit and restart the application for the fonts to become available.

Dai Banna SIL 2.200 source and font release (Tarball, MD5 hash: 8e057d96e38f95d15adf625d682bc09b)
Adrian Cheuk, 2011-03-18
Download "DaiBanna-src-2.200.tar.gz", gzipped tar archive, 1MB [408 downloads]

The source and font release includes the same files as DaiBanna-2.200.zip plus the FontLab and Graphite source files and some package-building templates. If you are uncertain what to do with a .tar.gz file, see Decompression Utilities, Downloading & Installation Tips.

This official release includes the following changes:

Added support for Unicode 5.2 additions
Renamed 'Oblique' fonts to 'Italic' (for user-friendliness)
Added .notdef, NULL, and CR to masters
Fixes:
- Open contours: 0020, 005F, 00A0, 2009, 200B, 2060
- Connection types: CJK punctuation
Design changes:
- U+19D2 NEW TAI LUE DIGIT TWO
- U+19D4 NEW TAI LUE DIGIT FOUR
New characters:
- U+19AA NEW TAI LUE HIGH SUA
- U+19AB NEW TAI LUE LOW SUA

Previous Versions

Dai Banna SIL 2.1 (official release) (Version 2.001)

Dai Banna SIL 2.1 font release (ZIP archive, MD5 hash: f78c170e5a600909bcdb1feb4d46f8cb)
Adrian Cheuk, 2008-06-06
Download "DaiBanna-2.1.zip", ZIP archive, 509KB [2695 downloads]

Dai Banna SIL 2.1 font release (Windows self-extractor, MD5 hash: f9696a0b1cb440df587fe5ee6e09c11d)
Adrian Cheuk, 2008-06-06
Download "DaiBanna-2.1.exe", Windows application, 405KB [1436 downloads]

Dai Banna SIL 2.1 source and font release (ZIP archive, MD5 hash: c8049fce0a85174a3f7b5de7f92019c3)
Adrian Cheuk, 2008-06-06
Download "DaiBanna-src-2.1.zip", ZIP archive, 1MB [1123 downloads]

This official release includes the following changes which reflect amendments made to ISO 10646:2003 in April 2008:

Added: U+19DA NEW TAI LUE THAM DIGIT ONE (new code point added in PDAM6.2)
Glyph change: U+19D1 NEW TAI LUE DIGIT ONE: → (glyph change in FPDAM5).
Deleted: U+E380 NEW TAI LUE DIGIT ALTERNATE ONE (PUA)

Dai Banna SIL 2.0 (public beta)

This version supports Unicode 5.0.

Dai Banna SIL 2.0 beta font release (ZIP archive, MD5 hash: 8ef485439cd846df100fcfb1ca95a4db)
Adrian Cheuk, 2007-12-10
Download "DaiBanna-2.0_beta.zip", ZIP archive, 508KB [2835 downloads]

Dai Banna SIL 2.0 beta font release (Windows self-extractor, MD5 hash: 44ee450086d266c4a634337fb5e20310)
Adrian Cheuk, 2007-12-10
Download "DaiBanna-2.0_beta.exe", Windows application, 404KB [1119 downloads]

Dai Banna SIL 2.0 beta font release (Debian package)
Adrian Cheuk, 2008-02-19
Download "ttf-sil-dai-banna_2.000-1_all.deb", Debian Linux Package, 559KB [1023 downloads]

Dai Banna SIL 2.0 beta source and font release (ZIP archive, MD5 hash: 186e9dd89ffafd971364fe90281f918e)
Adrian Cheuk, 2007-12-10
Download "DaiBanna-src-2.0_beta.zip", ZIP archive, 1MB [1022 downloads]

This beta release includes the following changes:

Code points updated to Unicode 5.0.
Released under SIL Open Font License (OFL).
New features:
- Support for re-ordrant vowels (affects: U+19B5, U+19B6, U+19B7, U+19BA).
- Line-breaking rules (affects: all characters).
Added:
- Geometric Shapes: U+25CC DOTTED CIRCLE
- CJK Symbols and Punctuation:
- - U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE
  - U+3001 IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
  - U+3002 IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
  - U+3008 LEFT ANGLE BRACKET
  - U+3009 RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
  - U+300A LEFT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET
  - U+300B RIGHT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET
- PUA: U+E380 NEW TAI LUE DIGIT ALTERNATE ONE
- Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms:
- - U+FF01 FULLWIDTH EXCLAMATION MARK
  - U+FF08 FULLWIDTH LEFT PARENTHESIS
  - U+FF09 FULLWIDTH RIGHT PARENTHESIS
  - U+FF0C FULLWIDTH COMMA
  - U+FF0E FULLWIDTH FULL STOP
  - U+FF1A FULLWIDTH COLON
  - U+FF1B FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON
  - U+FF1F FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK

Support

As these fonts and utilities are distributed at no cost, we are unable to provide a commercial level of personal technical support. We will, however, try to resolve problems that are reported to us.

We do hope that you will report problems so they can be addressed in future releases. Even if you are not having any specific problems, but have an idea on how this system could be improved, we want to hear your ideas and suggestions.

Please note that these fonts are intended for use by experienced computer users. Installing and using these fonts is not a trivial matter. The most effective technical support is usually provided by an experienced computer user who can personally sit down with you at your computer to troubleshoot the problem.

General troubleshooting information, including frequently asked questions, can be found in the documentation. Additional information is also available on the general Font FAQ page. If that fails to answer your question you can contact us at:

User Support
SIL International
Non-Roman Script Initiative
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd.
Dallas, TX 75236
USA

Email:

The New Tai Lue block was first added to Unicode 4.1 and subsequently amended up through Unicode 5.2. See the latest

code chart.

The fonts also contain support for another advanced font technology, OpenType. However, to render New Tai Lue text correctly using OpenType, a New Tai Lue shaper that carries reordering and line-breaking information is also required. Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 each comes with an OpenType shaper (Uniscribe) capable of reordering New Tai Lue vowels correctly, but neither can do smart line breaking. It is not known whether more capable OpenType shapers are available yet.