Tamil Unicode fonts

[lwalper]

I'm having trouble using Tamil fonts in ID CS3 (Win10). The glyphs get mixed up and an odd character is placed between the transposed characters, I suppose indicating that something unkind has happened to the ligature.  It's probably something to do with Unicode fonts (which I don't understand at all!). I'm using the Nirmala UI font.

[BobLevine]

Given this thread of yours: Solved: Using Tamil font in InDesign CS3 - Adobe Community - 15318816 I'm guessing either the font is an issue or trying to use an ancient, unsupported version of InDesign is causing problems.

[lwalper]

You may be correct. Ancient software may be the problem — but, what was used prior to CS6 (or whatever is current) before even CS3. I'm sure they've been printing in Tamil for more than just a few years past. It's my understanding Pagemaker used to work OK. I'd use that if I could find a copy.

[Joel Cherney]

That dotted-line circle is a substitution that occurs when glyphs are supposed to combine. Usually, to when working with complex-script fonts, our first question is "Have you turned on the World-Ready Composer?" But you don't have access to that in CS3. Nirmala UI would not work on Pagemaker, either. Back then we used pre-Unicode fonts with custom encodings.

Ancient software may be the problem — but, what was used prior to CS6 (or whatever is current) before even CS3.

If your Tamil text is keyed in Nirmala UI, going back to ancient software won't help, either. If you have to use CS3, you are most likely going to need to have the text rekeyed (or converted to e.g. Bamini proprietary encoding, and then re-checked by someone literate to find any conversion artifacts) and then set it in some other font.

[BobLevine]

CS6 was current in 2012, THIRTEEN YEARS AGO. You have, unfortunately fallen way behind. CS3 was version 6 of the software. There have been 15 versions released since then.

Is that the only reason here? I don't know but I do know that it can't eliminated as the cause. One way to find out would be to take a seven day trial of InDesign 2025 and try it.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

One way to find out would be to take a seven day trial of InDesign 2025 and try it.

I'm working on a form in InDesign CC 2025 right now, as in literally "I alt-tabbed over to this discussion after finalizing a Tamil document set in Nirmala UI." It works just fine, with the right preparations (making a paragraph style, choosing the World-Ready Composer, making sure the language is set to Tamil). 

@lwalper if you really do want to know about "what was used prior to CS6 (or whatever is current) before even CS3" then I can tell you all about the history of pre-Unicode complex script publishing. However, I think you're probably more interested in finishing this project than in learning about the weird workarounds we used in the Pagemaker era. But if you are more interested in finishing the project than learning about what we did in the pre-Unicode era, I think Bob has your answer. 

[lwalper]

I installed InDesign 2025. Here's a sample of the output . . . with the same problem. I've not yet figured out how to enable World-Ready Composer.

[lwalper]

OOps ... found it, and appears to have corrected the issue.