637772 - Problem with multiple vowel diacritics on one consonant in SBL Hebrew font with Harfbuzz

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect)

Description

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Attachment: Testcase

Background: normally there can only be one vowel per consonant in vocalized Hebrew. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule in the Biblical text, for example יְרוּשָׁלִַם and יְרוּשָׁלִָם, two forms of the name Jerusalem.

In most fonts, the sequence U+05DC HEBREW LETTER LAMED, U+05B7 HEBREW POINT PATAH (or U+05B8 HEBREW POINT QAMATS), U+05B4 HEBREW POINT HIRIQ is displayed badly with the two diacritics overwriting one another, and this is presumably a fault in the fonts which we can't do anything about.

In the Ezra SIL font (available from http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=EzraSIL_Home), the sequences are displayed correctly with or without harfbuzz turned on for Hebrew.

In the SBL Biblical Hebrew font (available from http://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_SBLHebrew.aspx), the sequences are displayed correctly without harfbuzz, but with harfbuzz the base consonant, the two diacritics and the following consonants all get mushed together.

Comment 1

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This is not actually a problem on current trunk, but happens if the patch in bug 635639 is applied.

Comment 2

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Later patches in bug 635639 fixed this.