Hariphunchai Project โครงการหริภุญชัย

Throughout the northern regions of Southeast Asia in Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos in the centuries prior to the modern period, the Tai Tham script has been used extensively to preserve important religious and cultural texts. In the Lanna (ล้านนา) region of Northern Thailand, the script is called tua mueang (ตั๋วเมือง) and continues to be taught in Buddhist monastaries. In monastaries throughout the region, texts in Sanskrit, Pali, and local Tai languages were traditionally written on palm leaf ( ใบลาน) and folded sa (พับสา) paper. In the Shan state of Myanmar, Tai Tham is the only script used to write the language of the Tai Kuen people.

In the current Digital Age, there is renewed interest in using the Tai Tham script to preserve the cultural heritage of the past and to educate the youth of a new generation. Historically, only monks and a few other educated people had access to Tai Tham texts. Digital technology, the internet, and the continuing development of Unicode as the worldwide standard for the exchange of textual information are now beginning to make it possible for many more people to read and write in Tai Tham.

However much work remains to be done before people can conveniently use Tai Tham on computers and the internet. Unicode fonts, keyboard and input methods, and software capable of handling Tai Tham are all still lacking.

Before we can do anything else, we need to have a professional, freely-available Unicode-compliant Tai Tham font that we can use to create and display text written in Tai Tham on computers and mobile devices.

The goal of the Hariphunchai Project is to create a professional-quality Unicode Tai Tham font family licensed under the terms of the Open Font License (OFL). We plan to initially create a single typeface with clean and simple letterforms in the Lanna style that will be easy to read both on screen and in print. The font that we create will be optimized for web and mobile device usage and will become freely available to everyone as part of Google's Font Initiative.

Useful Links:

Tai Tham script
อักษรธรรมล้านนา
ອັກສອນທໍາລ້ານນາ

What is Unicode?
Unicode คืออะไร?

SIL Open Font License
สัญญาอนุญาตของสถาบันภาษาศาสตร์สากลซัมเมอร์ ว่าด้วยแบบอักษรเสรี