emacs/unicode/chinese tone indication question

emacs/unicode/chinese tone indication question

[Will Parsons]

I use Emacs under multiple operating systems, but chiefly nowadays under
FreeBSD and Cygwin/Windows.

I want to use Chinese tone marks in discussing historical Chinese forms, and
by "Chinese tone marks" I *don't* mean the overhead vowel marks that are part
of pinyin, but the marks indicated by Unicode characters A700 - A707.  These
seem to have little support in the more common fonts.

I *have* managed to make these (admittedly unusual) characters visible under
FreeBSD by installing the DoulosSIL package.  But how do I do this under
Cygwin?  (I am interested in both a native Windows and Cygwin/X solution.)

-- 
Will


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Re: emacs/unicode/chinese tone indication question

[Brian Inglis]

On 2017-10-14 20:25, Will Parsons wrote:
> I use Emacs under multiple operating systems, but chiefly nowadays under
> FreeBSD and Cygwin/Windows.
> 
> I want to use Chinese tone marks in discussing historical Chinese forms, and
> by "Chinese tone marks" I *don't* mean the overhead vowel marks that are part
> of pinyin, but the marks indicated by Unicode characters A700 - A707.  These
> seem to have little support in the more common fonts.
> 
> I *have* managed to make these (admittedly unusual) characters visible under
> FreeBSD by installing the DoulosSIL package.  But how do I do this under
> Cygwin?  (I am interested in both a native Windows and Cygwin/X solution.)

Have a look at the fonts mentioned here:
	http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#ua700
	http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/modifier-tone-letters.html

There are Cygwin packages to install for:
	dejavu-fonts
	noto-cjk-fonts
	noto-simplified-chinese-fonts
	noto-traditional-chinese-fonts

I use the Deja Vu fonts (Mono, Sans, Serif) for terminals, editors, browsers,
and other apps where fonts may be specified, across systems, as they support a
lot of characters and ranges, are updated to track Unicode changes, and widely
packaged.

Cygwin Setup permanent postinstall fontconfig script should set these fonts up
for use by emacs and other apps.

Once installed under Cygwin, you can install these into Windows by running:
	$ cygstart /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/
then dragging the TTF files into the Windows Fonts folder.

You can do similarly with the Google Noto (No Tofu - .jp slang for undefined
char glyph) fonts, which I don't use, as there are separate packages for
different language and subranges, although character and range support should be
more comprehensive.

The above and other fonts mentioned are available in other distributions e.g.
Debian/Ubuntu packages fonts-sil-charis and fonts-sil-doulos (also fonts-dejavu
and fonts-noto) which may be installed if you have Windows Subsystem for
Linux/"Bash for Windows" and copied similarly to Cygwin fonts by running under
Cygwin:
	$ cygstart ~/AppData/Local/lxss/rootfs/usr/share/fonts/truetype/
then dragging the TTF files from the charis, doulos, dejavu, noto subdirectories
into the Windows Fonts folder.

The other fonts mentioned are readily available by searching on the web.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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Re: emacs/unicode/chinese tone indication question

[Will Parsons]

Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2017-10-14 20:25, Will Parsons wrote:
>> I use Emacs under multiple operating systems, but chiefly nowadays under
>> FreeBSD and Cygwin/Windows.
>> 
>> I want to use Chinese tone marks in discussing historical Chinese forms, and
>> by "Chinese tone marks" I *don't* mean the overhead vowel marks that are part
>> of pinyin, but the marks indicated by Unicode characters A700 - A707.  These
>> seem to have little support in the more common fonts.
>> 
>> I *have* managed to make these (admittedly unusual) characters visible under
>> FreeBSD by installing the DoulosSIL package.  But how do I do this under
>> Cygwin?  (I am interested in both a native Windows and Cygwin/X solution.)
>
> Have a look at the fonts mentioned here:
> 	http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#ua700
> 	http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/modifier-tone-letters.html

Hmm... That's a bit misleading - it *claims* that the Unicode characters that
I'm interested in are included in the DejaVu fonts, which I had already
installed, but I don't see these glyphs.

> There are Cygwin packages to install for:
> 	dejavu-fonts
> 	noto-cjk-fonts
> 	noto-simplified-chinese-fonts
> 	noto-traditional-chinese-fonts

I had already installed the first two, and I now have installed the last
(which had seemed promising), but to no avail.

> I use the Deja Vu fonts (Mono, Sans, Serif) for terminals, editors, browsers,
> and other apps where fonts may be specified, across systems, as they support a
> lot of characters and ranges, are updated to track Unicode changes, and widely
> packaged.

Yep - I like them too.

> Cygwin Setup permanent postinstall fontconfig script should set these fonts up
> for use by emacs and other apps.
>
> Once installed under Cygwin, you can install these into Windows by running:
> 	$ cygstart /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/
> then dragging the TTF files into the Windows Fonts folder.
>
> You can do similarly with the Google Noto (No Tofu - .jp slang for undefined
> char glyph) fonts, which I don't use, as there are separate packages for
> different language and subranges, although character and range support should be
> more comprehensive.
>
> The above and other fonts mentioned are available in other distributions e.g.
> Debian/Ubuntu packages fonts-sil-charis and fonts-sil-doulos (also fonts-dejavu
> and fonts-noto) which may be installed if you have Windows Subsystem for
> Linux/"Bash for Windows" and copied similarly to Cygwin fonts by running under
> Cygwin:
> 	$ cygstart ~/AppData/Local/lxss/rootfs/usr/share/fonts/truetype/
> then dragging the TTF files from the charis, doulos, dejavu, noto subdirectories
> into the Windows Fonts folder.

Thank you - I didn't know that.

> The other fonts mentioned are readily available by searching on the web.

As it *appears* that the font packages provided by Cygwin setup do not
provide the glyphs I need, and since I already knew that the DoulosSIL
package worked under FreeBSD, I went to the Doulos site and downloaded the
font package from there.  I first copied over the .ttf file to the Windows
font directory, without apparent effect.  But, I cannot say how delighted I
was to find that after copying the .ttf file to the Cygwin fonts directory,
that Cygwin Emacs displayed the characters correctly!

So, although the process was not as straightforward as I might have liked, I
now have a working solution due to your very helpful information.  Thank you.

-- 
Will


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