Octra Bond’s World

Since the last message, I still have delevoped Tai Tham (Lanna) font. I named it as Lanna Unicode UI which reflected specific purpose for user interface. I think it is now about 70% of work finished. I did not use MSVOLT because it was too complicated to use, it had no any manual, and it often crashed so I had to find other way to add required OpenType features to the font. I found OpenType Compiler (OTComp) which belongs to the same author of the previous tutorial page. Its script was hard at first because I had never met it before but I was able to understand its syntax.

The next problem is Windows and its applications do not quite support OpenType since the system treats my font as common TrueType. Although my tool can display the font correctly as good as its written script, OpenType features such as glyph substitution and positioning are dropped when I install it. I assumed that it might be caused by new script range which was freshly published by Unicode; but it was not the reason because I could type with my customized keyboard layout. I later found out that Windows checks DSIG header in font file to behave it as OpenType but my font does not have the header. I tried some tool from Microsoft Typography in order to add the DSIG data. But when I dumped the data into the font file, it was not only added DSIG data but also cleared other headers instead. (That was not the result I expected.) I still have had this problem till now; I am not sure that everyone can either use it like me.

I made a text logo placed on the top of the page and aligned it to the left because I planned to have other content there.