Hello community, after updating to Big Sur I have been having problems with visualizing Tibetan font. Seems like it is not just me, other people who work with Tibetan language are facing the same issue.
It happens both on web pages and personal documents.
Who should we contact for notifying the problem? Thanks in advance!
filippo209 wrote:
Yes you are right, using the font you indicated it types ok. same for microsoft Himalaya. Cambria, for example, does not work.
Times and Cambria, along with just about all fonts that come with MacOS, have no Tibetan in them and cannot display it at all. When you input Tibetan characters, an app is supposed to automatically use KaiLasa or Kokonor to display your text. This will be the case even if the font window of the app does not change and still says Times or Helvetica or some other Latin font.
When you see unstacked Tibetan, my guess is that the app is by mistake using a Chinese font. Some of these do have Tibetan in them, but only the basic unicode glyphs and not the extra stuff needed for stacking. I think Big Sur has a bug that defaults to one of these Chinese fonts for Tibetan instead of Kailasa or Kokonor, so that the user must then reset the font. This should not be necessary, and Apple should fix it.
It might be worth trying to deactivate the Chinese fonts, but new security features in Big Sur make that impossible I think.
Try Apple Feedback over here
filippo209 wrote:
What a big fat mess :(
Yes! And Catalina works fine. Personally I never upgrade until a couple months after the first release of a new system.
With the wikipedia page, it looks like Safari for some reason may be using a Chinese font for the bad titles.
In any case, when sending reports to Appe's feedback channel, include the url of this discussion so they can see the examples.
Dear Tom, sorry for the long delay. I attached three screenshots with url, as requested. No significant problems in pages, but I do for example also have issues in Facebook messenger:
As you can see, letters do not stack properly. Please see my latest comment at the bottom for the other screenshots. Thank you!
To add some more data for the powers that be--for me, I don't have any issues with fonts displaying in Firefox for either the Sera website or the Wikipedia:
For Safari, Sera's site loads correctly, but not Wikipedia's.
There is no problem with the Monlam dictionary entries, but there is with Rangjung Yeshe's:
Here's what I'm running:
filippo209 wrote:
Yes Tom, tried with different fonts and the result is the same. letters are not properly stacked.
Could you post a screen shot of what you get when you type the Wylie sequence in my example with Kokonor font active? Are you in MacOS 11.1?
Yes, the problem is that the office of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan government in exile, tens of thousands of scholars monks and academics in the west mainly use Macintosh for working, it would really be time for them to do a proper consistent job!
Very interesting, thanks!
I think you could accomplish the same thing if you could get rid of the Chinese fonts which are mistakenly being used for Tibetan, probably Songti and STSong. Unfortunately no easy way found yet to do this in Big Sur.
I am also having this problem, and based on another thread, I have submitted a bug report for Safari + Big Sur.
Is it still like that when you put the text into a Tibetan font instead of Times?
My own typing test looked ok
Yes you are right, using the font you indicated it types ok. same for microsoft Himalaya. Cambria, for example, does not work. I am in 11.1
Dear all, sorry for the long delay.
I attach some screenshots:
1) Safari, https://www.serajeyrigzodchenmo.org
2) Dictionary, Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary
Safari, https://bo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:རིག་མཛོད་སྐོར། (look not at the content of the paragraphs, but the titles)
Hope the problem will be fixed soon!
Thanks a lot for the interest,
Tsultrim
Thank you!
Very welcome and hope it all gets resolved soon.
What a big fat mess :(
Tibetan font after Big Sur update
