Historically, the Bugis script was used to write the Buginese, Makassarese and
Bimanese languages. Although it is no longer used for everyday
communication, it is used for ornamental purposes and special
occasions. There are also local endeavours to teach the
script in schools and some modern reforms to the writing system
have been adopted to accommodate this effort. It has even been
used to write Indonesian.
The Buginese script requires a few special features, including graphic transposition
and ligatures, to display text properly but these things are
all handled automatically by the features in our font. We also
provide support for some modern punctuation marks not specifically
included in Unicode as well as two different variants used to
display final consonants (these are modern innovations as traditional
use of the script does not provide for this).
The term ‘Buginese’ is commonly used but we have opted for the more natural name
‘Lontara.’ It is expected that the Unicode Consortium will adopt the
same designation.
The Lontara (Buginese) Language Kit for OS X comes with one font (shown above) and one phonetic keyboard layout.