Supporting Thaana labels

[mapmeld]

The language of the Maldives, Divehi, consistently is written in a right-to-left script called Thaana. You can see examples and a link to fonts on http://www.omniglot.com/writing/thaana.htm

On OpenStreetMap the correct symbols are displayed in the correct order, but the font is too small. For example, this island is named ފަރުކޮޅުފުށި (image attached)

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/4.2310/73.5452

I asked in Mapnik and they sent me here (mapnik/mapnik#2279)

[gravitystorm]

Thank you. If you know of any open-licensed fonts (ideally, any fonts that are distributed with Ubuntu) that cover the characters required for this language, please let us know.

[mapmeld]

I think FreeSerif is the right one: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_FreeSerif.html

[mapmeld]

Another link (though without the Thaana example) http://www.fontspace.com/gnu-freefont/freeserif

[pnorman]

DejaVu is a sans serif font, and it's really best to match that unless absolutely unable to.

It looks like FreeSerif is part of Freefont, which is available in ttf-freefont. How is FreeSans with Thaana?

[mapmeld]

@gravitystorm @pnorman Thaana is now included in Google's Apache-licensed sans serif Noto fonts: https://www.google.com/get/noto/#/family/noto-sans-thaa