Version 0.1, 13 July 2020
Version history:
0.1, 13 July 2020
The Lao (or Laotian) Script
In Brill publications, text in the Lao script has begun to appear. The Lao script is a complex one, and both application software and fonts are not without bugs. A quick introduction to the script itself can be found on ScriptSource. Quite a few languages are written using the Lao script. A useful linguistic description of the Lao script can be found online (downloadable PDF available): Sigrid Lew, “A linguistic analysis of the Lao writing system and its suitability for minority language orthographies” (subsequently published in Writing Systems Research 6 (2014), 25-40).
Typesetting application software
Adobe InDesign CC2020 is the first version of InDesign to support the Lao script, according to Adobe. Even so, Lao text does not always break correctly, between words, across lines (spaces are only used between clauses and sentences, not between words). The insertion of ZWSP between words will usually rectify this (Zero Width Space, U+200B: “this character is intended for invisible word separation and for line break control” – comment in the Unicode chart in which this character is listed, General Punctuation).
Fonts
Typeface
A definitive choice of the default typeface for the Lao script has not yet been made. For the time being, Noto Serif Lao Regular and Bold are used (bold for emphasis); download freely from the Google Noto Fonts site, searching for ‘Noto Serif Lao’. Type sizes are the same as for corresponding texts set in the Brill typeface. Noto Serif Lao fonts lack arabic numerals and ‘western’ punctuation and quotation marks, so if these occur in Lao text, the Brill typeface must be applied to them.
Other font candidates tested — The Saysettha typeface may also prove useful in the future, although there seems to be a bug in the bold font (in Saysettha Bold, one diacritic – ◌ົ, LAO VOWEL SIGN MAI KON, U+0EBB – is rendered as regular and not bold). The Sangam MN typeface must not be set as the default because it lacks a bold font. The Lao MN fonts are not suitable: some diacritics break in InDesign CC2020.
Font sizes
Noto Serif Lao font sizes:
Brill 11 pt: ~ Noto Serif Lao 11 pt
Brill 10 pt: ~ Noto Serif Lao 10 pt
Brill 9 pt: ~ Noto Serif Lao 9 pt
Font weights; marking emphasis
Noto Serif Lao Regular; Noto Serif Lao Bold.
Emphasis is marked by using bold type.
Windows and macOS
Windows fonts, as long as they are TrueType fonts (.ttf) or TrueType Collections (.ttc) can also be used on macOS.
