[TYPO3-UG India] Strange problem with Tamil in GMENUs

[Christian Lerrahn]

Hi Ronald,
> if you find an solution, please share with us. - I deal with the same 
> problem.

did you see the post by Mike Meir on typo3-english (my post there was
called "Strange problem with UTF-8 menus")? He explained in detail what
causes the problem. I have been searching for a solution but it seems
that while there are shaping engines available on UNIX (e.g. pango),
ImageMagick does not seem to link against them. My post on the
ImageMagick mailing list did not result in any replies. I might file a
bug on the ImageMagick bug tracker, however.

Cheers,
Christian

> Christian Lerrahn schrieb:
> > Hi,
> > the messages below have been posted on typo3-english before.
> > However, as this concerns an Indian language, I decided I'd try my
> > luck here, too. Anybody had this problem (an ImageMagick bug(?))
> > before and solved it?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Christian
> > 
> > Hi,
> > I'm trying to set up a site in Tamil but am having strange problems
> > with the graphical menus. I can't read Tamil but the editor tells me
> > that while he sees page titles correctly in the backend, they show
> > up wrongly in the frontend menus. When we use a non-UTF-8 font, we
> > can get correct menus. However, then the page titles will be wrong
> > in the HTML because they need to be UTF-8 there.
> > The problem seems to be that letters get swapped around. According
> > to my understanding from studying websites about the Tamil alphabet
> > these 2 letters actually form a kind of unit together. I can copy
> > the combination தே in here but when I try to delete the second of
> > the 2 letters, it actually deletes the first (probably because the
> > first one can't stand on its own).
> > What I conclude is happening is that ImageMagick is mirroring this
> > letter from the font file. However, I don't really understand why it
> > would do that and even less why it would not do it in a regional
> > encoding instead of UTF-8.
> > Has anybody ever run into the kind of problem and has a hint for me?
> > 
> > EDIT: I've now tried the same directly via ImageMagick and I get the
> > same effect.
> > 
> > convert -background lightblue -fill blue
> > -font /usr/share/fonts/tamil/TAMu_Kadampari.ttf  -size 165x70
> > -encoding utf8 -gravity center label:தே  label_gravity.gif
> > 
> > will result in the 2 letters of the string being swapped. However,
> > as I have now learned from someone who speaks Tamil, the
> > (originally) first letter is now modifying the meaning of the third
> > letter. I've tried that on 2 different systems with IM 6.4.0.6 and
> > 6.3.7.9. Does anybody know if it is possible to fix this in IM?
> > I'll also try the IM mailing list (if there happens to be one).
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Christian
> >