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I'm working on a project that would require the input of old Hangul syllable blocks (i.e. Hangul syllable blocks that would utilize obsolete characters such as ㆅ and ㅿ, located in the Hangul Compatibility Jamo unicode block), but I've been having quite a difficult time displaying the blocks as whole blocks (like 룰) instead of a string of separated glyphs (like ᅘᆇᇈ). Apparently, the strings ㄱㅏㅁ, 가ㅁ, and 감 are equivalent to each other, but the "GSUB features" of Hangul fonts ties them together to varying extents. From what I've gathered, a similar process is applied to Hangul Jamo, in which it's guessed how the block is to be shaped by which vowel follows is (like the difference between the ㄱ in 구 and 기) and whether not it has a final consonant (like the difference between the ㄱ in 가 and 갈).

I imagine that this is similar to how a combining diacritic would work, in which it would guess the height difference of a capital Á and minuscule á. There are many Latin fonts that don't support combining characters, and considering that although ㄱㅏㅁ, 가ㅁ, and 감 are equal, in the end 감 is a precomposed character, and the whole purpose of the Hangul Jamo unicode block is (according to the Wikipedia article on it) to "be used to dynamically compose syllables that are not available as precomposed Hangul syllables in Unicode, specifically archaic syllables containing sounds that have since merged phonetically with other sounds in modern pronunciation." This makes me wonder if the Hangul Jamo behave more like space modifying characters that would need { EQ \o(X1,X2) } to be combined with their respective character.

Most of what I've read speak about font design and command lines which makes it seem that the writer is doing a bit more than just inputting obsolete characters on a word processor, and yet behold: https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-han-sans/issues/34 . The poster and commentators are trying to figure out Hangul Jamo composition in verticle form, yet they have already composed syllable blocks horizontally in a word processor, but how is nowhere to be seen.

一二三
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crayondraw
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  • What do you mean by "old Hangul"? Are you talking about these jamo: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3130.pdf ? – 一二三 Nov 25 '15 at 09:01
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    I’m afraid this question, as stated, is not a good fit for our format and is likely to be closed. I suggest you first read about [how to ask a good question](http://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask), then put your research in order and ask specific questions about the parts you don’t understand. If possible, it might be a good idea to go ahead with the rest of your project and leave the glyph-clasping for later; it sounds like a minor esthetic issue to me. – Tom Zych Nov 25 '15 at 10:05
  • @TomZych Thank you for the criticism, I hope the question is formatted better now. I'm progressing on by hand, but inputting digitally would be much more convenient. – crayondraw Nov 25 '15 at 15:52
  • Well, that's much clearer. And I see it's somewhat more than a minor aesthetic issue. I don't know much about this but I'll see if I can add some tags that will catch the attention of those who do. – Tom Zych Nov 25 '15 at 16:28
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    Looking at the tag for `southeast-asian-languages`, I saw a link to a Google resource, [Early Access fonts](http://www.google.com/fonts/earlyaccess). There's a font there called Noto Sans KR that says it "has the full support for Old Hangul with Unicode Hangul Conjoining Jamos". Might be useful. – Tom Zych Nov 25 '15 at 16:36

3 Answers3

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Although Unicode contains code points for obsolete or archaic jamo (like ㆅ and ㅿ), there are no precomposed forms with these characters, and they are excluded from the Unicode normalisation algorithm that composes/decomposes jamo into syllable blocks (although they do have compatibility decompositions into the regular Hangul jamo block, e.g. ㅾ U+317E to ᄶ U+1136).

That is, as far as Unicode is concerned these archaic jamo do not form Hangul syllable blocks at all.

However, fonts may implement their own precomposed forms through the ccmp, ljmo, vjmo, and tjmo OpenType features for Hangul layout. Support for syllable composition using these features is up to the font designer and may go beyond what Unicode supports. Therefore, if you need support for syllable blocks that contain these jamo, you will need to find a font with such support.

一二三
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  • This does clarify much of the posts online talking about Hangul Jamo. – crayondraw Nov 26 '15 at 15:21
  • Unicode does have precomposed forms with the characters in the question, there are conjoining versions at the Hangul Jamo block. Everything in the Hangul Compatibility Jamo block has conjoining versions at the Hangul Jamo block. – ninjalj Dec 28 '21 at 11:59
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It all depends on the font. Some fonts will give you the connected forms automatically, most will not. The only useful ones that I found so far are:

Malgun Gothic (comes with Windows 10)

Hayashi-Serif (downloadable for free)

Haydar
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The Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130–U+318F) block doesn't have conjoining behavior. To get conjoining behavior, use Jamo from:

  • Hangul Jamo: U+1100–U+11FF
  • Hangul Jamo Extended-A: U+A960–U+A97F
  • Hangul Jamo Extended-B: U+D7B0–U+D7FF

In particular, the obsolete characters in the question are:

  • U+3185 ‹ㆅ› \N{HANGUL LETTER SSANGHIEUH}, which has a conjoining version at:
    • ᅘ U+1158 HANGUL CHOSEONG SSANGHIEUH (leading consonant)
  • U+317F ‹ㅿ› \N{HANGUL LETTER PANSIOS}, which has conjoining versions at:
    • ᅀ U+1140 HANGUL CHOSEONG PANSIOS (leading consonant)
    • ᇫ U+11EB HANGUL JONGSEONG PANSIOS (trailing consonant)
ninjalj
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