[Fontinst] New LAO encoding for typesetting Lao language

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I recently engaged myself in using LaTeX to produce a PDF document
> in the Lao language.  Since I did not find any suitable encoding I
> felt myself forced to write lao.etx, lao.enc, laoenc.def etc files
> to get the work done.

Please send me the stuff.  Since support for Lao is almost identical
to Thai support I could include it into the Thai framework of my CJK
package.

> The LAO encoding that I created works with TrueType fonts (converted to
> Type 1) such as Saysettha, Alice, XiengThong etc, where the Lao
> characters are in the Unicode range 0x0e80-0x0eff and ligatures for tone
> mark and vowel combinations are in the Unicode private range starting at
> 0xE000.
>
> There are still some small things to do on the kerning of the tone marks
> and vowel signs, but these may be font specific so I did not put more
> than necessary (ie ligatures) into the etx-file.

Have you read my article on Thai in TUGBoat?

  https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb21-2/tb67lemb.pdf

AFAIK, Lao does something similar, so it should be solvable within
TeX.  The current Thai implementation can be found in the CJK package
(cjk.ffii.org).


    Werner