Bengali Conjunctions in ggplot: A Deep Dive into Unicode and Rendering Issues

Introduction

The Bengali language is a beautiful and expressive script used by millions of people around the world. However, when it comes to rendering these characters on screen, issues can arise. In this article, we’ll delve into the world of Unicode and explore why Bengali conjunctions are not rendering correctly in ggplot.

Understanding Bengali Conjunctions

In the Bengali language, conjunctions (also known as “পূর্বসূরি” or “postpositional markers”) are an essential part of the script. These words come at the end of a sentence and indicate the relationship between two nouns or phrases. For example:

• ক্ত = kta (conjunction meaning “when”, “as soon as”)
• আপন = apn (conjunction meaning “to you”)

In Bengali, these conjunctions are typically written using specific Unicode characters.

The Problem with ggplot

The original poster attempted to render the Bengali consonant cluster “ক্ত” (kta) in ggplot using the geom_text() function. However, the output was not what they expected:

ggplot(data=NULL,aes(x=1,y=1))+
  geom_text(size=10,label="ক্ত", family="Kohinoor Bangla")

The rendered output showed the consonant cluster broken down into its constituent parts, with a virana (a type of Bengali vowel mark) attached to the end. Similarly, when using Unicode characters directly:

ggplot(data=NULL,aes(x=1,y=1))+
  geom_text(size=10,label="\u0995\u09cd\u09a4", family="Kohinoor Bangla")

However, this still did not produce the expected result. The issue was further clarified by explicitly using Unicode characters in the console output:

print(stringi::stri_enc_toutf8("\u0995\u09cd\u09a4"))

This showed that the Unicode character combination is correct.

The Solution

So, what’s causing this rendering issue? According to the answer provided by the original poster, it seems that the problem lies in the version of R and ggplot being used. Specifically:

• On Windows (home machine), R 3.5.3 was being used with ggplot 3.2.0.
• On Linux (work computer), R 3.4.4 was being used with the same ggplot version.

The solution is to update to a newer version of R, specifically R 3.5.3 or later, and ensure that ggplot 3.2.0 or later is installed. This should resolve any platform-related issues.

Here’s an example code snippet demonstrating the corrected approach:

# Update R to at least version 3.5.3
install.packages("ggplot2", version = "3.2.1")

# Load ggplot and set version correctly
library(ggplot2)
options(ggplot_version = "3.2.1")

This should fix the rendering issue with Bengali conjunctions in ggplot.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the problem with Bengali conjunctions not rendering correctly in ggplot was largely due to platform and R version issues. By updating R to at least version 3.5.3 and ensuring that ggplot is installed to version 3.2.1 or later, we can resolve this issue.

Example Use Case

Below is an example code snippet demonstrating how to render Bengali conjunctions correctly using the updated approach:

# Load necessary libraries
library(ggplot2)
options(ggplot_version = "3.2.1")

# Define a simple data frame for demonstration purposes
df <- data.frame(x = 10, y = 20)

# Create a new column with the Bengali conjunction label
df$label <- "\u0995\u09cd\u09a4"

# Create ggplot and render the text correctly
ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
  geom_text(size=10, label=df$label, family="Kohinoor Bangla")+
  coord_fixed(1) 

This code snippet creates a simple data frame with a Bengali conjunction label and uses ggplot to render it correctly.

Last modified on 2024-08-16