BabelStone Fonts

BabelStone Marchen

Description

BabelStone Marchen is a Unicode font for the sMar-chen script, which was used to write the extinct Zhang-zhung language (see my blog post on the Zhang Zhung Royal Seal), and which has also been used to write the Tibetan language in the context of the Bön religion. This font is based on an experimental Tibetan-mapped font that I released in May 2007 (BabelStone Tibetan sMar-chen, font no longer available).

This script was added to Unicode v. 9.0 in June 2016 as the Marchen script (see N4032 and N4491 for the encoding proposals). The Marchen script in Unicode consists of 68 characters in the Marchen block in the range 11C70..11CBF: a head mark (11C70), a shad mark (11C71), thirty letters (11C72..11C8F), twenty-nine subjoined letters (11C92..11CA7 and 11CA9..11CAF), a vowel lengthener sign (11CB0), four vowel signs (11CB1..11CB4), anusvara sign (11CB5), and candrabindu sign 11CB6). Marchen is typographically a complex script, written horizontally from left to right but with vertical stacking of consonants and vowels on the Tibetan model. The encoding model for Marchen follows Tibetan, so that consonant stacks can be formed by appending one or more subjoined letter to a base letter. Vowel lengthener, vowels signs, anusvara and candrabindu may be added to a base letter or a consonant stack. The BabelStone Marchen font supports all stacks used in writing Tibetan and Zhang-zhung, but does not support arbitrary complex stacks required for Sanskrit. Unlike Tibetan, syllables are not separated with a tsheg mark, and this means that syllable boundaries may be ambiguous in some cases (for example, a letter GA may be either a suffix to the preceding syllable or a prefix to the following syllable). In ambiguous cases U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE may be inserted at the syllable boundary to ensure correct text processing (e.g. word selection).

Samples

BabelStone Marchen (36 points)

Source: Yig gzugs du ma'i ma phyi gzhon nu mdzes pa'i lang tsho p.9

Source Text (html version)

Zhang Zhung Royal Seal and Transcription

𑱳𑲁𑱽𑱾𑲌𑱵𑲋𑲱𑱴𑱶𑲱𑲅𑲊𑱱

Inscription on Temple at the gYong-drung Bon Monastery in Dolanji (Himachal Pradesh)

Photograph curtesy of Chris Hatchell

𑱰𑱱 𑲏𑲰𑲴𑲶𑱽𑲁𑲏𑱼𑱲𑲊𑲍...

Rendering Issues

The BabelStone Marchen font supports complex shaping behaviour using OpenType features, and should display correctly under Windows 10. One small issue is that the height of the 'i' vowel sign on a deep stack depends on whether the stack the 'i' vowel is attached to is preceded by one of the five prefix letters (ga, da, ba, ma, 'a) or not. Normally the height of the 'i' vowel stem matches the height of the stack, but if the stack is preceded by one of the five prefix letters, then the height of the 'i' vowel stem matches the height of the preceding prefix letter. This behaviour is coded for in the font, but does not seem to be applied by the rendering system used on Windows 10 or HarfBuzz. To work around this defect, you may manually reduce the height of the 'i' stem on a deep stack by appenmding the variation selector VS1 (U+FE00) after the letter 'i' (U+11CB1). This use of VS1 is not conformant with the Unicode Standard, but is a hack to enable correct typographic behaviour where essential.

Examples of stacks with different heights of 'I' stem

Note that in the final example the height of the 'i' stem is reduced to the height of the preceding prefix letter.

Character Repertoire

The tables below render each character in the BabelStone Marchen font (excluding Basic Latin characters), either using the font installed on your local machine or using a WOFF font if the font is not installed on your local machine.

Marchen [11C70..11CBF]

Tibetan [0F00..0FFF]

OpenType Features

Version History

Download

BabelStone Marchen is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which means you are free to use it for personal or commercial purposes, and to redistribute it by itself or as part of a free or commercial software package, just as long as you do not sell the font on its own. The license also allows you to modify the font in any way you like, as long as the modified font does not use "BabelStone" in its name. Please read the license for details.

For use on your computer or mobile device please download and install the TTF file. The WOFF and WOFF2 files are for web use only, and are not required by most users.

BabelStone Fonts