Danny's Weblog

PKD

This folder is for postings related to my free font "PKD" for representing Khmer, English and Thai phonetically. In order to view it as intended, you need to install that font: pkd.ttf

If you have not done so, or if something went wrong, the following two lines will look the same (and you will not see phonetics anywhere else, either):

kNOm mIn jOG tIv te

but if you have successfully installed the font the second line should show the phonetics (as soon as you hit F5 to refresh the page).

You also need to be using a browser that handles CSS (ie almost all Mac/Windows browsers) because I use CSS on this site to specify fonts.

I may at some point create an ".eot" version of this font to allow Internet Explorer to download it automatically, but then only IE can access it: I think most people will want to be able to use it in their word processor, etc, as well.

2006 May 15 [ Mon ]

My PKD font is not embeddable yet

Although my PKD font is intended to be freely distributable, I did not set the flag appropriately when I created it. For a long time I was not sure how to do that, but recently I figured that out. Now I can make a .PDF file containing the fonts: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/pdfs/pkdtest01.pdf]

(I apologize for the incorrect Khmer in that PDF: it's just there as a reference for the PKD phonetic text version.)

However I am still getting a refusal from Microsoft's "WEFT" tool to create an auto-downloadable .eot file. It's strange: I have a very old version of the font which WEFT does not object to, so it can't be impossible – I just don't know which of the umpteen subsequent changes I made is what it's objecting to. I'm going to have to go through it one by one.

WEFT link: msdn.microsoft.com [http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/fontembed/font_embed.asp]

Once I've figured out the WEFT problem – or given up – I'll provid a new version of the PKD font with full embedability. There are a few other cleanups I'll add at the same time.

[Single-story view] [/nolist/pkd] [permanent link]
Responses: 0 [View/add responses]

2006 Jan 06 [ Fri ]

Reason for problem installing PKD

I had tried installing the font on some machines in an internet cafe and been surprised to find I had to uncheck the "install fonts to font folder" option. It's now occurred to me that on this system, I am probably not allowed to write to the system folder (including the fotns folder); presumably installing a font just writes an entry to the registry, which is allowed, and which just points to the font file wherever it may be.

It makes me wonder what happens when the My Documents (or wherever I put the font file) folder gets wiped, as happens periodically. I think that's what produces the puzzling "The PKD font is in use and cannot be overwritten" prompt, even when PKD is not on the list of installed fonts; there's a link to a previous install location in the registry, but the actual font is no longer there.

[Single-story view] [/nolist/pkd] [permanent link]
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Using PKD for Thai

Here's a posting on this: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Thailand/Thai-language/pkdthai01.html]

[Single-story view] [/nolist/pkd] [permanent link]
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2005 Nov 09 [ Wed ]

How to enter phonetic characters for Khmer using my PKD font

My font handles phonetics for Khmer, English and Thai: this note is just for Khmer.

Generally I have tried to allow all the phonetics used by Huffman, following for instance his use of the "h" character to represent aspiration. This allows him to avoid needing special characters like "bp" and "dt".

B	oUB	The "breve" character – that's what Huffmann calls it in his books. (Hence "B".) This is the thing that looks a bit like a tilde which he uses to indicate that a pair of vowels is pronounced short not long (his default for vowel pairs). In order to get it to appear in the right place, you need to key it at the end of the pair of vowels, and it then automagically appears in the right place. Likewise, I needed to supply a pair of vowels to get it to show up properly. Note that the "accent" diacritics that I use for Thai, like mAiF chAiF also show up to the left of their entered position.
C	C	I generally want to follow Huffman's system, but I have always been unhappy with the way he represents final consonants, especially the "ch". He just says they are unreleased; to my ear, a final "ch" sounds a lot more like "kt". The other final sounds are not so bad. Anyhow, I decided to throw in this character in order to represent what I feel is a different sound.
E	E	This of course is the sound of British English "met", or when long, "air". The unshifted e, of course, represents an Italian e sound.
G	G	The "ng" sound, as in English "singing", etc. Many sources get away with representing this sound with "ng", but that really isn't optimal.
I	I	This is the sound often represented as "eu", a nasal. I find the use of a sort of "i" a little unintuitive, but it is the standard as used by Huffman. I needed to make a lot of space around the character to allow diacritics to be used; maybe I should also increase the width of the bar of the i, so the gap is less disturbing.
N	N	The n-tilde character sometimes represented as "ny". It's important to use a single character for it in Khmer because that makes it clear that when used as a final, it is unreleased.
U	U	This is the 'schwa' character often represented as "er". it's a little unfortunate that I need to use a "u" to get a character that looks like an "e", but oh well. Actually, "u" is used for this sound in the Royal Thai romanization scheme.

[Single-story view] [/nolist/pkd] [permanent link]
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Example of my new phonetic font "PKD.TTF" for Khmer, English and Thai

In order to display this page correctly you need to download and install my font. It's about 35 kB and there's no restrictions on use (I will probably go for a Creative Commons licence).

Download here: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/fonts/pkd.ttf]

I think it's uniquely easy to use, because you can access any of the characters just by using the shift key – I've replaced most of the usual upper-case characters by the new ones needed for phonetics.I think the allocations I chose are not hard to remember, eg "N" for n-tilde (ny), and "G" for "ng".

Because none of the characters have unusual bytecodes, this phonetic text can easily pass through 7-bit ASCII email systems, and can be created and edited with any editor and keyboard. In 7-bit ASCII of course, the font definition is absent, so what you see will be something like this:

kNOm rOOk mIn kIN te

which I think is not to tough to handle mentally.

If you have already installed the font on the computer you are using, and assuming your machine is set to use CSS to accept font definitions, it should display properly here:

kNOm rOOk mIn kIN te

In W2K, you install a font as follows: Start - settings - control panel - fonts - file - install new font

The file selection window is rather primitive and it may be easiest to just copy the file to the root of your hard drive if you don't now the path to your My Documents. Windows may complain "is currently in use and cannot be replaced"; if so, uncheck the "copy to fonts folder" option.

[Single-story view] [/nolist/pkd] [permanent link]
Responses: 0 [View/add responses]

I hope this information was useful. There may be a great deal more information on this site that is relevant to what you need. Take a look at the "site map" display at left; you can click on a topic to see many recent items on that topic.

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