Yudit HOWTO
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You can see the howto documents in Yudit unicode editor if you type 'howto configure' in the command area of the editor window.
For your reference, I put the following documents on this server:
arabic, baybayin, berber, bidi, build, configure, devanagari, freehand, georgian, greekancient, japanese, keymap, malayalam, rovasiras, syntax, tamil, tibetan, vietnamese, windows
HOWTO rovasiras
How to use Yudit to edit Hungarian Runic text
Written by: Gáspár Sinai <gaspar yudit org>
Modified: Tokyo 2020-05-24
Unicode introduced Old Hungarian from version 8.0.0.
Yudit supported Rovásírás even before that in Unicode
Private Use Area.
Now Yudit supports both encodings, but for information
exchange you should use Unicode Old Hungarian.
Yudit modified a freeware font with CC license
downloaded from
https://github.com/OldHungarian/old-hungarian-font/
Several glyphs have been reworked, but most importantly
Hosszú Gábor's original Rovás Szabvány ligatures have
been added in both small and capital form and they
can be accessed with ZWJ constructs.
The font was renamed to OldHungarian_full.ttf and it
comes with Yudit distribution. The OldHungarian input
in Yudit shows how to type the character sequences
available in this font.
##############################
# Original HOWTO Document follows
# Date: Tokyo 2002-02-25
##############################
On 2002-12-07 I renamed OldHungarian.kmap to HungarianRunes.kmap.
They mean the same thing rovásírás but I prefer to use
Hungarian Runes.
You can use yudit for rovásírás out of the box because yudit.ttf
comes with rovas glyphs in PUA, so in theory you need this document
only if you want to use the original rovas fonts.
Introduction
Hungarian Runes is the script that was used by Hungarians before
Latin letters were introduced. Please see the References section
for more details.
Hungarian Runes support was added to Yudit to enable researchers and
enthusiasts to make plain text email correspondence in mixed old
Hungarian (rovasiras) and modern Hungarian. If a font is created
it would even be possible to set up an utf-8 encoded web page that
contains both old and new Hungarian.
The PUA codes in Yudit are not a replacement to Hungarian Rovas
Standard, they just let us create mixed language plain text.
Yudit will always be able to use legacy Hungarian Rovas Standard
fonts and texts with the built-in rovas converter.
Installation
Follow the instructions from http://www.yudit.org. If you have
a previous installation, after unistallation of the previous
version, it is advised to remove the yudit.properties file:
~/.yudit/yudit.properties
Please read Remarks section to see what ~/ means here. This
is an important step because yudit.ttf encoding has been changed
and you may not be able to display text with it if old configuration
files are lying around.
1. It is usually as simple as,
./configure
make
make install (as root)
By default the yudit executable is installed in /usr/bin/
directory. Other files will be placed under /usr/share/yudit.
2. Download the following fonts:
rovstdjb.ttf - Font for right-to-left writing
rovstd.ttf - Font for left-to-right writing
they were created by Dr. Hosszú Gábor.
They are freely downloadable from:
http://geocities.com/rovasiras/betuk/index.html
Please note: yudit-2.5.4 yudit.ttf incorporated rovstd.ttf
into PUA so you don't need to download them (you may skip 2,3,4).
3. Locate font directory:
Windows: C:\Program Files\yudit\fonts or ~/.yudit/fonts
Linux: /usr/share/yudit/fonts or ~/.yudit/fonts
4. Copy rovstd.ttf and rovstdjb.ttf to fonts directory.
If you don't have an existing configuration, that came, for instance
from a previous installation of yudit, you can skip steps 5 and 6.
5. Modify ~/.yudit/yudit.properties, add virtual fonts
yudit.editor.fonts=default,TrueType,Misc,Rovas
yudit.font.Rovas=rovstd.ttf:rovas:LR,rovstd.ttf:rovas:RL,yudit.ttf
As LR glyphs are mirrored images of their RL counterparts we should
to attach the LR (left-to-Right) and RL (Right-to-Left) attributes
to the appropriate fonts. The encoding rovas option need to be used
for the font encoding.
You can omit the direction - LR direction is assumed then. The
mirrored glyphs are calculated from their LR and RL counterparts
if they are not specified explicitly:
yudit.font.Rovas=rovstd.ttf:rovas,yudit.ttf
As yudit.ttf already has rovas characters, put it to the end as
a last resort font.
Here are a few other font examples (some of them unnecessarily
use two fonts to get the mirroring done):
yudit.editor.fonts=default,TrueType,Misc,Rovas,Csenge,RovFS,RovSada,RovV1,Sumer
yudit.font.Rovas=arial.ttf,rovstd.ttf:rovas
yudit.font.Csenge=arial.ttf,csengejb.ttf:rovas:RL
yudit.font.RovFS=arial.ttf,rov_fsjb.ttf:rovas:RL
yudit.font.RovSada=arial.ttf,rovsada.ttf:rovas:LR
yudit.font.RovV1=arial.ttf,rov_v1jb.ttf:rovas:RL,rov_v1.ttf:rovas:LR
yudit.font.Sumer=arial.ttf,sumerjb.ttf:rovas:RL,sumer.ttf:rovas:LR
Of course the simplest case is when we just use one font, yudit.ttf
yudit.font.Simplest=yudit.ttf
it has rovas characters in PUA.
Please note that filenames are case sensitive in Linux.
6. Invoke Yudit
Change font (with this configuration it is F4)
Change input to HungarianRunes
Small letters like o o" o: produce normal letters.
Capital letter combinations like AB produce ligatures.
7. Enjoy (optional)
Remarks:
a) ~/ means HOME directory. This is the directory that you
see when you press home button in Yudit file manager.
b) In yudit file manager .yudit is not visible unless you
press the "hidden" button.
c) After fresh installation you need to invoke yudit and exit
so that ~/.yudit/yudit.properties file gets created.
This is needed only if ~/.yudit/yudit.properties is missing.
Important Technical Notes
Reading Dr. Hosszú Gábor's specification:
http://geocities.com/rovasiras/cikkl/bevezet/bevezet.htm
I decided to make the following remapping:
0xEE00..0xEE29 HUNGARIAN RUNIC LETTERS (42)
0xEE2F HUNGARIAN RUNIC PUNCTUATION (1)
0xEE30..0xEE3D HUNGARIAN RUNIC NUMBERS (6)
0xEE40..0xEEAF HUNGARIAN RUNIC LIGATURES (76)
WARNING: This is the Private Use Area of Unicode. Files created
will not be portable, and in the (unlikely) event that Unicode will
include Hungarian Runes your files would need conversion.
As of 2002-03-01 EE00-EEAF is unassigned by ConScript Unicode Registry.
Please note that ConScript Unicode Registry:
http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/
is an place to register PUA characters. You may want to try to get
Old Hungarian registered - it would help font makers so that they
would not use these characters for other purposes in fonts. Even
Klingon is registered there, so you might get lucky, but personally
I don't think you will succeed registering it.
Unrelated information: Conscript is organized by the same people who
make the official Unicode.
Note that not registering may actually be even good for Old Hungarian,
because, for instance, we are not forced to use ZWJ and ZWNJ zero with
characters to accept ligature formation, and we will have the freedom
to specify ligatures directly when we want them, and also make conversion
possible with the legacy Rovas Standard. What is most important of all
can use reversible algorithms that are usually not very popular at
Unicode Consortium. Reversible algorithms are very useful to preserve
the integrity of plain text.
With the use of PUA we also have the freedom to put Old Hungarian into
BMP so we can encode our emails in utf-7, as utf-7 can encode only
16 bits.
Old Hungarian Unicode Proposal (dated 1998):
http://wwwold.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1686/n1686.htm
does not have
HUNGARIAN RUNIC LETTER CLOSED E
HUNGARIAN RUNIC LETTER AS
HUNGARIAN RUNIC LETTER ATY
All 3 of them can be used in Yudit.
Conversion
If text contains only Old Hungarian, conversion to/from the
Hungarian Rovas Standard is possible if the file is read/written
with rovas converter as a file-type. OldHungarian file-type can
be used to make a transliteration of the text with the keyboard
input map.
Be aware that 8-bit encoding is correctly encoding the Rovas
standard fonts. If Unicode encoding table is used in True Type
fonts I found the following differences in rovstd.ttf, for instance:
Glyph Character Format4 Format0 (8-bit)
GO 0xEE58 0x0152 0x8C
HA 0xEE59 0x0178 0x9F
HI 0xEE5B 0x02DC 0x98
IT 0xEE5D 0x2026 0x85
NT 0xEE6D 0x0153 0x9C
SK 0xEE78 0x0192 0x83
UNK 0xEE84 0x2122 0x99
Yudit automatically uses 8 bit encoding when necessary so you don't
need to know this subtle detail.
References
Dr. Hosszú Gábor <hageel (at) freemail.hu>
http://geocities.com/rovasiras/
Heves Gábor <heves (at) fang.fa.gau.h>
http://fang.fa.gau.hu/~heves/
Lehoczki Endre <elehoczk (at) supernet.ca>
http://www.dsuper.net/~elehoczk/
Hungarian Letters and Writing
http://www2.4dcomm.com/millenia/alphabet.htm
Ancient Hungarian Runic Writing
http://www.interlog.com/~photodsk/magyar/rovas/rovaseng.html
Rovástól Írásig (Hungarian)
http://www.sztaki.hu/~smarton/erdely/rovas.htm
Magyar Törzsnevek
http://www2.4dcomm.com/millenia/tribe.htm
