Octra Bond’s World

On the first day of October, Unicode Consortium released its standard in version 5.2. The Unicode standard is known as unified character code point for global language. It finally contains Tai Tham script, as known as Lanna or Khuen script which is used in northern Thailand. I have an idea to make this script available for computers (at least for Windows). I had done its keyboard layout as one of Thai language subtype but it had to have more usage on special button; it will need to be described in manual in the future. I finished the layout and it could be actually used. Thanks for Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator in this case.

The next step is to have a supported font. There are Lanna typefaces lately which are developed by some universities but they are too thin and small, not suitable for user interface or generic use. Additionally, they do not follow the Unicode standard. (Indeed, they were released before the standard.) They just replace alphabets on Thai script range; it should not have been that way. I decided to create new one that looks better on screen. I found that just drawing the alphabets is not enough; a good font must also have good typography – glyph ordering, positioning, stacking, and shifting in some cases. Those are the features of OpenType font that I must learn more. I have worked with a font creater program for long time. And then I must convert the font into OpenType. I do not yet try Microsoft Visual OpenType Layout Tool I downloaded but I hope it will be easy for me.

Oh, I babble too much today. See you later.