Letter spacing in Indic scripts

Script like Devanagari has "Shirorekha" (top bar/line), normally space is
used only after a word, i.e. wordspace. No letter spacing is used normally.
Only in some cases where the text is designed specially curved or
vertically written, letter spacing needs to be used. In all text
editing/designing/DTP softwares letter spacing or character spacing has to
be set off for scripts like Devanagari.  In case of letter spacing is used,
it is natural that Shirorekha will appear cut-off. But in no case the
maatra (dependent vowel) or conjunct characters should appear as separated
by space.

It may be very complex to set syllable rules for such rendering.

हरिराम
प्रगत भारत <http://hariraama.blogspot.com>


On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 10:10 PM, Phillips, Addison <addison@lab126.com>wrote:

>  Are there examples (pictures) of the use of letter spacing in print
> publications (like posters)? I'm less interested in word puzzles than in
> what printed matter looks like...
>
> Also, a concern would be what the classical handling off the scripts would
> be like: that is, what would a typesetter in, say, 1950, consider correct
> extended letter-spacing? Ideally we want to understand the difference
> between software limitation and desired practice.
>
> Addison
>
> (Typed on my Kindle Fire HDX)
>
>
> Prashant Verma <vermaprashant1@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Richard,
>
> Indic scripts do letter spacing. They are sometimes used in posters and
> word puzzle in newspaper/magazines,  etc. We have tested letter spacing
> property in some of the Indian languages on various browsers. The test
> results of Hindi are available at *http://w3cindia.in/word_pdf/test-report-for-hindi.pdf
> <http://w3cindia.in/word_pdf/test-report-for-hindi.pdf>*   in horizontal
> spacing section. Letter spacing does well in Mozilla and at some browsers
> conjuncts character are broken. The expected result is also shown in the
> document.
>
>
>  regards,
>
>
>  Prashant Verma
>
> W3C India
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:25 PM, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear Indic layout taskforce,
>>
>> CSS3 Text defines a letter-spacing property at
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-3/#letter-spacing-property
>>
>> I have two questions on behalf of the i18n WG:
>>
>> [1] do indic scripts do letter-spacing?
>>
>> [2] if they do, what happens for scripts with a bar, such as Devanagari?
>> Is the bar continuous or broken?
>>
>> I suppose another question would be whether there are any other
>> idiosynchrasies involved for indic scripts, such as unequal spacing, etc.
>>
>> The CSS3 Text spec is at the end of the Last Call period, so the spec
>> authors would appreciate a quick response on this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Prashant Verma I  Sr. Software Engineer
> W3C India
> New Delhi
> Cell : +91-8800521042
> Website : http://www.w3cindia.in
>