How do I change language-specific font fallback preferences?

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Level 1

8 points

How do I change language-specific font fallback preferences?

My MacBook's default fonts for viewing content in the Malayalam script/language seem to be Malayalam MN and Malayalam Sangam MN -- not surprisingly, since those are the default Malayalam fonts that come with the OS. However, both of those fonts are missing a lot of conjuncts/ligatures. There are some free fonts that do have the missing characters, so I'd like to put them at the top of whatever preference list the OS is using to decide which fonts to choose. Does anybody know how I can do that?

MacBook, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Aug 27, 2014 11:04 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,228 points

Aug 27, 2014 2:05 PM in response to phubenthal

phubenthal wrote:

both of those fonts are missing a lot of conjuncts/ligatures.

Could you provide some examples? Just type them here and give the keystrokes you are using.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,228 points

Aug 27, 2014 2:32 PM in response to phubenthal

phubenthal wrote:

There are some free fonts that do have the missing characters, so I'd like to put them at the top of whatever preference list the OS is using to decide which fonts to choose. Does anybody know how I can do that?

Could you provide the names of the free fonts?

You should be able to make it the default by just deactivating or removing the ones provided by apple.

Another way may be to edit the file:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/CoreText.fra mework/Resources/DefaultFontFallbacks.plist

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Answer 3

phubenthal Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 27, 2014 2:53 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Sorry, I'm not writing the language (yet), just trying to read it. But try this: Go to the Malayalam Wikipedia page for the city of Thiruvananthapuram. In the title of the article, the second syllable ("ru") displays -- at least for me -- as two separate characters,"ra" and "u" (third and fourth characters in line, "ra" looks a little like an @ symbol and "u" is the one after it, looks like a cherry on a long stem). But the language also has a ra-u ligature, which is what I'd like to be seeing. Same with the next-to-last syllable, "pu," which is displaying as "pa" and "u" instead of the ligature.

Edit: The free font I was wanting to use is Anjali Old Lipi, which I got from here: http://malayalam.kerala.gov.in/index.php/Fonts

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,228 points

Aug 27, 2014 5:15 PM in response to phubenthal

phubenthal wrote:

Go to the Malayalam Wikipedia page for the city of Thiruvananthapuram. In the title of the article, the second syllable ("ru") displays -- at least for me -- as two separate characters,"ra" and "u" (third and fourth characters in line, "ra" looks a little like an @ symbol and "u" is the one after it, looks like a cherry on a long stem). But the language also has a ra-u ligature, which is what I'd like to be seeing. Same with the next-to-last syllable, "pu," which is displaying as "pa" and "u" instead of the ligature.

Thanks! You are right, the Apple fonts only display the Reformed version of those combinations developed in the 1970's and not the Traditional versions.

Let us know if you are successful in changing the default font using any of the methods I suggested.

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Answer 5

phubenthal Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 28, 2014 2:50 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Amazing: Someone with knowledge of both OSX and Malayalam orthography answers my question within hours of my posting it. Thank you, Tom!

I tried your suggestions. Disabling the Apple-provided fonts didn't seem to do anything, and moving them to the trash transformed the Thiruvananthapuram page I linked above into a sea of placeholder characters. So I put them back and tried editing the preference list. I inserted Anjali Old Lipi above Malayalam Sangam MN, and I also inserted Rachana (another free font available from the Kerala government site above) above Malayalam MN. Then I restarted.

At first I thought it hadn't worked, because the body of the Thiruvananthapuram page looked exactly the same. But then I noticed that the page title, up in the top edge of the window, was displaying the characters I wanted. And when I tried copying some text and pasting it into TextEdit, it appeared in either Anjali (when I pasted into a plain text document) or Rachana (in rich text). Finally it dawned on me that I needed to adjust my Firefox preferences too, and that did the trick. Probably I wouldn't have needed to edit the preference list if I'd thought of changing my Firefox preferences earlier, but I'm glad to have learned how to make the change systemwide.

Slightly off-topic: I've read that acceptance of the 1970s reforms has been less than universal, and in the process of finding those alternate fonts I noticed that a different fork of Anjali has actually had some of the conjuncts removed. If you happen to know, I'd be curious: Just how much of a free-for-all is Malayalam spelling today?

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