indic-computing-devel — Discussing the development of tools for Indian language information processing

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Sayamindu D. <unm...@So...>]

i have the CODE2000 font installed
-sdg-

On Tue, 2002-09-03 at 13:34, Guntupalli Karunakar wrote:
> On 02 Sep 2002 23:27:11 +0530
> Sayamindu Dasgupta <unm...@So...> wrote:
>=20
> > On Mon, 2002-09-02 at 22:30, Arun Sharma wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 04:27:30PM +0530, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:
> >=20
> > hia,
> > for some strange reasons, i'm not being enable to make mozilla
> > render unicode text
> > i have 1.1  (for linux) installed - and i wrote some text (bangla)
> > in yudit
> > i converted that into html, but mozilla could not render it :(
> > ms ie could render the thing quite nicely, even the yuktakshars and
> > stuffs were there=20
> > are u guys enabling some special option??
> >
>  Do you have a bangla unicode font or a unicode font having bangla
> glyphs ?
>  Unicode aware apps like Mozilla, KDE are able to show Indic
> characters, but not the reordering & conjuncts etc.
>=20
>  A patch for devanagari rendering in Mozilla ( this is usign pango )
> is at=20
> http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D85204
> =20
>  I think post workshop this could be one acitivty. Have a team which
> works on adding indic rendering in Mozilla.
>=20
> Regards,
> Karunakar
>=20
>=20
--=20
=E0=A6=B8=E0=A6=BE=E0=A7=9F=E0=A6=AE=E0=A6=BF=E0=A6=A8=E0=A7=8D=E0=A6=A6=E0=
=A7=81 =E0=A6=A6=E0=A6=BE=E0=A6=B6=E0=A6=97=E0=A7=81=E0=A6=AA=E0=A7=8D=E0=
=A6=A4=20

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Guntupalli K. <kar...@fr...>]

On 02 Sep 2002 23:27:11 +0530
Sayamindu Dasgupta <unm...@So...> wrote:

> On Mon, 2002-09-02 at 22:30, Arun Sharma wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 04:27:30PM +0530, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:
> 
> hia,
> for some strange reasons, i'm not being enable to make mozilla
> render unicode text
> i have 1.1  (for linux) installed - and i wrote some text (bangla)
> in yudit
> i converted that into html, but mozilla could not render it :(
> ms ie could render the thing quite nicely, even the yuktakshars and
> stuffs were there 
> are u guys enabling some special option??
>
 Do you have a bangla unicode font or a unicode font having bangla
glyphs ?
 Unicode aware apps like Mozilla, KDE are able to show Indic
characters, but not the reordering & conjuncts etc.

 A patch for devanagari rendering in Mozilla ( this is usign pango )
is at 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85204
 
 I think post workshop this could be one acitivty. Have a team which
works on adding indic rendering in Mozilla.

Regards,
Karunakar

[Indic-computing-devel] Clarification

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

Hi All,

Let me clarify about the white paper requested for the indic-computing
documentation effort. 

As long as the topic is relevant to serious, concrete issues about
computing in Indian languages, you are free in the choice of topic.  It
need not be centered around the events or outcome of the workshop,
although it could be.  

The important thing is that it will be some useful content culled out of
the annals of our collective brain, that can then be documented, freely
distributed, and discussed (both at the workshop and through other
communication channels), so that as many people around that are
interested in indic-computing can learn about it and stuff it into their
own respective cranial annals.  ;)

Here are some possible examples:

Indic-Rendering HOWTO (I think Keyur is doing this)
The Advantages of a Remington Keyboard Layout
Gnome2: IN HINDI!!!! - Lessons Learned
Gnome2: IN MALAYALAM!!!
KDE3: IN KANNADA!!!!
Vernacular Spell-Checkers
Voice Recognition Applications for Indic Languages

So, you get the point.

Please get back to me in a couple of days if you can...

Regards,
Tapan

------------------------------------------
Tapan S. Parikh
तपन à¤_स परिà¤_ 
ta...@ya...
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/tapan/




 

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

> As I suggested earlier, these issues would go away, if we created
> Xutf8DrawString and brand new X protocol requests and then have a
> separate Xlib, that aliases Xutf8DrawString to XDrawString.
> 
> Now, all the tests would pass, because we leave the normal code path
> unchanged. People wanting to use Indic stuff would just do:
> 
> LD_PRELOAD=/usr/X11R6/indic/lib/libX11.so ./mozilla
> 
> This solution wouldn't require any changes to existing applications. 
> 
> If everyone is happy with this solution, we could start working on it,
> as soon as Keyur has the code up in sourceforge.
> 
> I think indiX is great technology - but it needs to reach common
> people. For that, we need to get the code into leading Linux/BSD 
> distributions.

I agree.  Keyur, is there any progress on getting some your code and/or
ideas introduced as patches or branches into the XFree86 tree?

-- Tapan

[Indic-computing-devel] Re: X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[<jk...@Fr...>]

ks> Instead you'll find words like "Modified X Window system".

There is no warning to potential users that IndiX's modifications
break existing applications.

ks> If they can get the things right for them, then they will be
ks> happy. If they can run other applications without any problem then
ks> they do not have any objection.

The problem is a serious one.

I have been looking at the error bitmaps from the test suite run.
IndiX is silently deleting, reordering, and substituting glyphs in
text drawing requests issued by standard X clients.

Imagine what this would mean for a spreadsheet program if the digits
displayed were silently deleted, reordered or substituted.

This is a very serious bug; IndiX's text rendering is B-R-O-K-E-N.

ks> for your concern, I'll put all the clarifications on our newly designed
ks> website at sourceforge. So don't worry, be happy :-)

This breakage in NCST IndiX was discussed nearly a year back on this
very list (I even remember mailing out a list of tests in the X test
suite that would be likely to fail -- the discussion is archived in
our list archives).  Running the X test suite to verify the reported
problems is a matter of a few hours work.  If you had had good
intentions towards your users you would have verified the issue and
taken corrective action then itself.

Even after a year there is absolutely NO MENTION about this serious
breakage in the NCST IndiX web pages --- not even a one liner warning
that:

   "The NCST IndiX server is not compatible with regular X clients".

On the contrary, we are seeing NCST's IndiX being promoted in local
government and development circles as an "Indian language solution for
Linux".

If this is not misleading users, then what is? :(

Regards,
Koshy
<jk...@fr...>

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Sayamindu D. <unm...@So...>]

yes, I could see the texts correctly in Yudit
and in Mozilla i could see ur page in Hindi
and even Konqueror rendered the Bangla page that I made
however mozilla could not :(
-sdg-

On Tue, 2002-09-03 at 00:44, Arun Sharma wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 11:27:11PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> > i converted that into html, but mozilla could not render it :(
> > ms ie could render the thing quite nicely, even the yuktakshars and
> > stuffs were there=20
> > are u guys enabling some special option??
>=20
> No, I'm not doing anything special.=20
>=20
> a) Were you able to see your text (HTML version) correctly in yudit ?
> b) Are you able to see other web pages correctly ? I can see this page
> correctly in mozilla/Linux with raghu.ttf.
>=20
> http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/home.hi_IN.utf8.html
>=20
> This was with XFree86 4.2.0 with the freetype2 patch.
>=20
> 	-Arun
>=20
>=20
--=20
=E0=A6=B8=E0=A6=BE=E0=A7=9F=E0=A6=AE=E0=A6=BF=E0=A6=A8=E0=A7=8D=E0=A6=A6=E0=
=A7=81 =E0=A6=A6=E0=A6=BE=E0=A6=B6=E0=A6=97=E0=A7=81=E0=A6=AA=E0=A7=8D=E0=
=A6=A4=20

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 11:27:11PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> i converted that into html, but mozilla could not render it :(
> ms ie could render the thing quite nicely, even the yuktakshars and
> stuffs were there 
> are u guys enabling some special option??

No, I'm not doing anything special. 

a) Were you able to see your text (HTML version) correctly in yudit ?
b) Are you able to see other web pages correctly ? I can see this page
correctly in mozilla/Linux with raghu.ttf.

http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/home.hi_IN.utf8.html

This was with XFree86 4.2.0 with the freetype2 patch.

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 03:20:33AM -0700, Joseph Koshy wrote:
> 
> [note: the vendor string for IndiX still records the server vendor as
>  "The XFree86 Project, Inc." (as reported by `xdpyinfo') ]
> 
> -- IndiX bugs --
> XDrawString                  39P,1F                     40P,0F
> XDrawString16                40P,0F                     40P,0F
> XDrawText                    42P,2F                     44P,0F
> XDrawText16                  29P,14F                    43P,0F
> XQueryTextExtents16          1P,2F                      3P,0F
> XQueryTextExtents            1P,2F                      3P,0F
> XSetFontPath                 2P,1F                      3P,0F

As I suggested earlier, these issues would go away, if we created
Xutf8DrawString and brand new X protocol requests and then have a separate
Xlib, that aliases Xutf8DrawString to XDrawString.

Now, all the tests would pass, because we leave the normal code path
unchanged. People wanting to use Indic stuff would just do:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/X11R6/indic/lib/libX11.so ./mozilla

This solution wouldn't require any changes to existing applications. 

If everyone is happy with this solution, we could start working on it,
as soon as Keyur has the code up in sourceforge.

I think indiX is great technology - but it needs to reach common
people. For that, we need to get the code into leading Linux/BSD 
distributions.

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Sayamindu D. <unm...@So...>]

On Mon, 2002-09-02 at 22:30, Arun Sharma wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 04:27:30PM +0530, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:
> > [Aside:  I sent this using mozilla because I wanted to try this new=20
> > UTF-8 .sig.  Of the mail clients on my system (balsa, sylpheed, and=20
> > mozilla), only mozilla seemed to support UTF-8 message encoding.=20
> > Additionally it somehow is just magically working that I did a simple=20
> > copy and paste from a Yudit window and now I can magically see my name=20
> > in Devanagri in the .sig below.  Cool!
>=20
> That's right - mozilla does a splendid job of rendering text (Especially
> in 1.1). They fixed the font baseline problem which caused the
> "underline" to pierce through the heart of the font.
>=20
> But the following bugs remain:
>=20
> - The title of the window not rendered correctly
> - Keyboard input in UTF-8 doesn't work in the composer
>=20
> 	-Arun
>=20
>=20

hia,
for some strange reasons, i'm not being enable to make mozilla render
unicode text
i have 1.1  (for linux) installed - and i wrote some text (bangla) in
yudit
i converted that into html, but mozilla could not render it :(
ms ie could render the thing quite nicely, even the yuktakshars and
stuffs were there=20
are u guys enabling some special option??
-sdg-


--=20
=E0=A6=B8=E0=A6=BE=E0=A7=9F=E0=A6=AE=E0=A6=BF=E0=A6=A8=E0=A7=8D=E0=A6=A6=E0=
=A7=81 =E0=A6=A6=E0=A6=BE=E0=A6=B6=E0=A6=97=E0=A7=81=E0=A6=AA=E0=A7=8D=E0=
=A6=A4=20

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 04:27:30PM +0530, Tapan S. Parikh wrote:
> [Aside:  I sent this using mozilla because I wanted to try this new 
> UTF-8 .sig.  Of the mail clients on my system (balsa, sylpheed, and 
> mozilla), only mozilla seemed to support UTF-8 message encoding. 
> Additionally it somehow is just magically working that I did a simple 
> copy and paste from a Yudit window and now I can magically see my name 
> in Devanagri in the .sig below.  Cool!

That's right - mozilla does a splendid job of rendering text (Especially
in 1.1). They fixed the font baseline problem which caused the
"underline" to pierce through the heart of the font.

But the following bugs remain:

- The title of the window not rendered correctly
- Keyboard input in UTF-8 doesn't work in the composer

	-Arun

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 02:51:54AM -0700, Baiju M wrote:
> > I'm not sure I understand the question - but mozilla in the
> > above
> > configuration didn't support GSUB.
> 
> Actuall I want to test an OpenType which is under development
> stage. Yudit seems supporting GSUB table for some glyph
> substitutions. I am using PfaEdit to create GSUB table for this
> font. Now 6 glyphs only given for testing purpose. 
> Font  is available here: 
> http://malayalamlinux.sf.net/font-devel/
>  Can anyone test this in any applications, please send me your
> feedback. 
> (The font is lecensed under GPL, it is created by N.V.Shaji
> using Jeroen Helligman's Malayalam TeX package.)

To test your font, I'd create a text file such as:

http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/languages/kannada/kaguNita.html

and open it in yudit to check if all the glyphs are being rendered
correctly.

	-Arun

[Indic-computing-devel] Re: X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[Keyur S. <key...@ya...>]

Dear Koshy,

--- Joseph Koshy <jk...@Fr...> wrote:
>
> I'm just concerned that NCST IndiX in its current form is being touted
> as an "implementation of the X Window System Protocol" when it is not.

Nowhere on IndiX website we are claiming that IndiX is an "implementation
of the X Window System Protocol". Instead you'll find words like "Modified
X Window system".

> 
> This has been my concern from the very beginning.
> 
> The right thing would have been for NCST to say that IndiX is a
> "experimental and incompatible variation of the X Window System
> Protocol" and leave it to the end-user to decide whether they want
> indic rendering enough to bear with potential incompatibilities.

Let the users decide what is more convenient to them. What matters most to
users is end result. Most of the users are least concerned about protocol.
If they can get the things right for them, then they will be happy. If they
can run other applications without any problem then they do not have any
objection. They do not suffer with any incompatibilities that you are most
concerned with. Users get what they want. They have a desktop environment
with Indian language support; they have a terminal emulator program in
which they can see text mode commands/applications producing results in
Indian languages; and they have browsers which can properly render Indian
language characters. They can even take high quality printout on the paper.

Would you ever like to put a note on indic-computing website that "This
project is for discussing and developing standards which is not backed
directly by any industry or government"?

I am sorry if I am offending too much. But not putting irrelavent
information for the end users does not mean that we are touting it as
"Implementation of standard X Window system". On the website we have
explained, in brief, about what has been modified. Source is anyway open
and people can examine it for what has been changed and what has not. If
they don't want to take that pain, then we are sitting here to answer all
their queries. I give you an assurance that you won't find anybody
complaining about not receiving any reply of the mail sent to me or anyone
in the IndiX development team.

And I do not believe in "I have to have say something and mine should be
the last word". So I'll not reply any further on this topic on this mailing
list. However off-the-list discussion/suggestion is very welcome. Finally,
for your concern, I'll put all the clarifications on our newly designed
website at sourceforge. So don't worry, be happy :-)

Regards,
Keyur


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[Indic-computing-devel] Localisation on Personal Access Devices

[Trevor W. <tre...@ya...>]

--- Trevor Warren <tre...@ya...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello there guys/gals...;)
> 
>   At the lab i am working with some Handheld
> personal
> access devices of the likes of the Ipaq h3650-h3850
> on
> which i have gnu-linux up nd running.
> 
>   I hav quite an uphill task here....but i am sure
> with the community support nd pple like u to help me
> out with it..............this will turn out to be a
> swell of a challenge...;)
> 
>   Since u'll have been working with localisation
> issues related to the desktop x86 config's for such
> a
> long time.....it was obvious that we should begin
> this
> thread here.
> 
>  As of now.....my objective at the lab is to have
> Localisation work started on these Personal Access
> devices as i have mentioned above.  Encore, one of
> the
> constituents of the Simputer trust has  also
> promised
> a Commercially available framework sometime down the
> line that would enable third party application
> developers to add value to their product by
> integrating Local language support in a modular form
> onto the Simputer.
> 
>  All that sounds hunky dory......but for Bigger
> issues
> like the Simputer itself, nd biggest of all the
> COMMERCIAL ness of the Framework for Localisation.
> 
>  Pls help me get started with this initiative which
> i
> could help snowball into larger efforts targeted
> towards Localisation on the available Handhelds in
> the
> market as of now.....
> 
>  My focus being on......
> 
> --> Ipaq h3600-h3800-h3900 series.
> --> Sharp Zaurus 
> --> Simputer...................if i am ever able to
> lay my hands on the mean baby...:)
> 
>  Ur bouques/brickbats r invited ASAP.
> 
> Trevor 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> =====
> ( >-    GNU/LINUX, It's all about CHOICE      -< )
> /~\    __  http://www.qmailtheeasyway.com __   /~\
> |  \) /    mailto: tre...@me...   \ (/ |
> |_|_  \      Research Asst, MediaLab        / _|_|
>        \___________________________________/
> 
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> 
>
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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

> Actuall I want to test an OpenType which is under development
> stage. Yudit seems supporting GSUB table for some glyph
> substitutions. I am using PfaEdit to create GSUB table for this
> font. Now 6 glyphs only given for testing purpose. 
> Font  is available here: 
> http://malayalamlinux.sf.net/font-devel/
>  Can anyone test this in any applications, please send me your
> feedback. 
> (The font is lecensed under GPL, it is created by N.V.Shaji
> using Jeroen Helligman's Malayalam TeX package.)
> 
> With thanks and regards,
> Baiju M

This is a problem on this kind of list.  We have a hard time commenting
on all possible languages, also when someone asked about Bengali last
week.  I dont know Bengali or Malayalam.  I only know Gujarati and Hindi
(and those of you who know me prb arent so sure about the latter ;)

Makes me think of Nehru, who wanted to create a common script for many
of the Indian languages.  Maybe it wasnt a terrible idea...

-- Tapan

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Re: X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

I think it is a big mistake not to discuss Indix on this list.  Imho it
is the probably the best indic script renderer in the world.  Definitely
the best free one, not counting the folks in Redmond.

I agree Koshy's points are well taken, and the empirical results are
good.  There are very compelling reasons to adhere to the X protocol. 
But is the X protocol the work of God?  Is it unassailable?  I remember
Keyur's counterpoints as not being without merit.  

While I dont want to rehash that discussion either, I respect what Keyur
and NCST have done and I like hearing more about it.

-- Tapan

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 03:59:24 -0700 (PDT)
Keyur Shroff <key...@ya...> wrote:

> Dear Koshy,
> 
> --- Joseph Koshy <jk...@Fr...> wrote:
> > 
> > I remember raising the issue about the protocol (non)compliance of
> > NCST IndiX a year or so back.  I am disappointed to see that the
> > NCST IndiX web page has STILL no mention of the its non-compliance
> > to the X Window System standard, leaving its users to figure this
> > out the hard way :(.
> > 
> 
> I think neither of us want to restart any new thread regarding IndiX
> on this list. That's why I replied privately to Arun's mail.
> 
> I do agree on the point that IndiX violates X protocol to some extent
> but it provides simpler and immediate solution to the users which is
> very difficult to achieve otherwise. In my humble opinion, protocol
> definition is also somewhat vague since difference between glyph code
> and character code was not there at the time of protocol design. Even
> after non-compliance with core X protocol, IndiX does not make any
> serious side effect to the applications. Some undiscovered bugs may
> still be there which need to be corrected.
> 
> I have now registered this project on the SourceForge
> (http://indix.sourceforge.net) and the website is under construction.
> Current indix website (http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix) was
> constructed mainly for end users since development of the code was
> limited to NCST only. So it was decided not to put any complex
> information which normal users can not digest. However, I have never
> tried to mislead other developers intensionally.
> 
> Regards,
> Keyur
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
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> 
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[Indic-computing-devel] Re: X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[Keyur S. <key...@ya...>]

Dear Koshy,

--- Joseph Koshy <jk...@Fr...> wrote:
> 
> I remember raising the issue about the protocol (non)compliance of
> NCST IndiX a year or so back.  I am disappointed to see that the NCST
> IndiX web page has STILL no mention of the its non-compliance to the X
> Window System standard, leaving its users to figure this out the hard
> way :(.
> 

I think neither of us want to restart any new thread regarding IndiX on
this list. That's why I replied privately to Arun's mail.

I do agree on the point that IndiX violates X protocol to some extent but
it provides simpler and immediate solution to the users which is very
difficult to achieve otherwise. In my humble opinion, protocol definition
is also somewhat vague since difference between glyph code and character
code was not there at the time of protocol design. Even after
non-compliance with core X protocol, IndiX does not make any serious side
effect to the applications. Some undiscovered bugs may still be there which
need to be corrected.

I have now registered this project on the SourceForge
(http://indix.sourceforge.net) and the website is under construction.
Current indix website (http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix) was constructed
mainly for end users since development of the code was limited to NCST
only. So it was decided not to put any complex information which normal
users can not digest. However, I have never tried to mislead other
developers intensionally.

Regards,
Keyur


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[Indic-computing-devel] Request for Participation

[Tapan S. P. <ta...@ya...>]

Hi,

You all may have seen the post by Ashish on the -devel and -announce 
lists today about the upcoming Indic-Computing workshop in Bangalore.

In case for whatever reason you wont be able to join us, we would still 
like your participation in the workshop.  If you would be kind enough to 
write a small white paper for the conference proceedings, relevant to 
technical or other issues in indic-computing, we would be very happy to 
include it in the proceedings we distribute at the workshop and afterwords.

For the white paper feel free to choose any topic that you feel is 
relavant to local language computing in India.  Of course, the most 
detailed, informative and widely applicable white papers will be found 
most useful by the community. Hint... ;)

If you intend to do this, please send me a proposed title for your white 
paper as soon as you can, so I can include it in the TOC.  You can then 
send the white papers directly to me and I will edit and collate them 
into the final collection.

If you want to discuss possible topics for white papers, float em to me 
or Koshy.

Talk to u soon,
Tapan

------------------------------------------
Tapan S. Parikh
तपन एस परिख
ta...@ya...
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/tapan/

[Aside:  I sent this using mozilla because I wanted to try this new 
UTF-8 .sig.  Of the mail clients on my system (balsa, sylpheed, and 
mozilla), only mozilla seemed to support UTF-8 message encoding. 
Additionally it somehow is just magically working that I did a simple 
copy and paste from a Yudit window and now I can magically see my name 
in Devanagri in the .sig below.  Cool!

I had expected to see junk b/c I hadnt really configured any fonts. 
This is out of the box.  Not sure why it works.  Also I couldnt seem to 
spell my name right.  It looks like Parkhi.  Prb, like someone said, the 
GSUB table aint working right in Mo.  Anyway, Im happy.;)  Mo rocks.]

[Indic-computing-devel] X Test Suite failures in NCST IndiX

[<jk...@Fr...>]

As expected, running the font handling portions of the X test suite
against NCST Indix results in test failures in font drawing.

Here is a summary:

                             IndiX                      XFree86
                             ~~~~~                      ~~~~~~~

[OS]                         FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE         FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE

[source base]                X403-indix-src-*          (X336 public release)
                             (rohini.ncst.ernet.in)    (xfree86.org)

[server version]             4003                       3360

[note: the vendor string for IndiX still records the server vendor as
 "The XFree86 Project, Inc." (as reported by `xdpyinfo') ]

-- IndiX bugs --
XDrawString                  39P,1F                     40P,0F
XDrawString16                40P,0F                     40P,0F
XDrawText                    42P,2F                     44P,0F
XDrawText16                  29P,14F                    43P,0F
XQueryTextExtents16          1P,2F                      3P,0F
XQueryTextExtents            1P,2F                      3P,0F
XSetFontPath                 2P,1F                      3P,0F

-- common bugs in both code bases --
XQueryFont                   1P,2F                      1P,2F
XLoadQueryFont               3P,1F                      3P,1F
XListFontsWithInfo           4P,2F                      4P,2F

[Legend: aP, bF means: 'a' passes and 'b' failures.]

Additional Notes:

 - The test run was conducted using the 'pure framebuffer' X server
   "Xvfb", to isolate the test from any bugs in graphics card specific
   driver code.  

 - Only the test cases that deal with glyph rendering were
   invoked.

I remember raising the issue about the protocol (non)compliance of
NCST IndiX a year or so back.  I am disappointed to see that the NCST
IndiX web page has STILL no mention of the its non-compliance to the X
Window System standard, leaving its users to figure this out the hard
way :(.

In my commercial X servers writing days (a decade back), even ONE X
test failure was enough to stop code shipment.

Koshy
<jk...@fr...>

[Indic-computing-devel] Invitation for Indic Computing Workshop

[Ashish K. <as...@mi...>]

Dear Friends,

The Indic Computing Group is organising a two day workshop in
Bangalore on September 15-16, 2002. The main purpose of this workshop is to
build a community of people working in the space of developing local
language development tools, applications, and content, to better coordinate
their ideas and approaches towards the future of indic-computing.

By building a community of practitioners, developers, linguistic experts and
organizers, we hope to share ideas and experiences, facilitate broad
discussion about the issues involved and discuss future directions for the
field.  We also hope that this broad coalition would enable more broad-based
and active participation in international standards processes and forums,
such as the Unicode Consortium and W3C.

At the end of the meeting, we hope to have assembled a community of
technically informed and motivated people to organize and lead the
indic-computing development effort into the future.  The leadership of this
community should be individual driven, technically motivated, and entrenched
with youth, vitality and a progressive vision. We hope that you will join us
and contribute to taking this effort forward.

A draft agenda is enclosed with this mail for your perusal. Details about
the
schedule, venue etc. would be conveyed to the participants soon.

Please get in touch with me or any of the following people if you are
interested
to participate and contribute to this workshop .

Tapan Parikh - ta...@ya...
Venky Hariharan - ve...@vs...
Joseph Koshy - ko...@hp...

Warm regards,

Ashish Kotamkar

------------------------------------------------------------
DRAFT AGENDA

DAY 1

1) Experiences of Practitioners  - Discuss people's experiences with using
local language technologies, particularly highlighting gaps in the
technology and
the particular reasons certain technology decisions were made.  Include
NGOs, development organizations, schools, government offices, etc.

2) Encodings - Discuss various encoding options, their strengths and
weaknesses, and OS and application-level support for local language
computing in each.  Also
discuss the process by which each standard evolves.

3) Display Technologies - Discuss various font technologies, their relative
merits, and also OS and application-level support for their display and
rendering.

4) Input Methods- Discuss various types of input methods, their advantages,
prospective users, and software / driver support.

DAY 2

5) Linguistics - Presentation by groups studying language representation
from a linguistic perspective.  Discuss the linguistic issues and problems
with
current encoding systems, fonts and rendering methodologies, and ways these
problems can and have been redressed, either by participation in standards
amendment
procedures, or via other avenues.

6) Tools - Discuss various local language toolkits and APIs, the
functionality they provide, and the appropriate ways for those technologies
to be included in
the future from an application and OS perspective.

7) Organization and Capacity Building - Discuss various ways people have
tried to organize this process before, and how we can all work together to
consolidate these efforts to build a common platform for discussion and
policy.

8) Future Directions - Discuss future research directions for indic-language
computing, including speech generation and recognition, machine translation,
multi-lingual data retrieval, and other promising research avenues.

-x-

Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Baiju M <mal...@ya...>]

> I'm not sure I understand the question - but mozilla in the
> above
> configuration didn't support GSUB.

Actuall I want to test an OpenType which is under development
stage. Yudit seems supporting GSUB table for some glyph
substitutions. I am using PfaEdit to create GSUB table for this
font. Now 6 glyphs only given for testing purpose. 
Font  is available here: 
http://malayalamlinux.sf.net/font-devel/
 Can anyone test this in any applications, please send me your
feedback. 
(The font is lecensed under GPL, it is created by N.V.Shaji
using Jeroen Helligman's Malayalam TeX package.)

With thanks and regards,
Baiju M


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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 07:27:02PM -0700, Baiju M wrote:
> > - mozilla can be configured to use fonts such as
> > mangal/raghu/tunga
> 
> If do so, will it support GSUB? 

I'm not sure I understand the question - but mozilla in the above
configuration didn't support GSUB.

> (In a similar way of Yudit)

Yudit opens the font file directly and doesn't depend on the X server
for this functionality. I also tested yudit-2.6 with the above fonts and
they seem to work well, except for some minor flaws.

But the main issue is yudit is a "special purpose" app. Working on a
general purpose framework is a lot more important, because most app
developers are unlikely to spend a lot of time i18n'izing their apps.
Ultimately what we need may be a text editor widget that's Indic aware
(such as a KPart or the Gnome equivalent).

From what I can tell the Gnome and KDE camps are coming up with their
own APIs for dealing with this beast. Pango is primarily used in gnome
(although the author seems to suggest that it's more general) and Qt3
has an Arabic shaping engine built-in.

> http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/freetype/2002-June/002387.html
> 
> These GSUB and other advanced OTF table support is going to be
> solved by using FreeType Layout library, let us wait for some
> time.
> 
> http://www.freetype.org/ftlayout/index.html

I've been reading this page for close to a year now. I think the Indian
community has to take the initiative and push these features. Otherwise
these things may never happen.

	-Arun

PS: Found this on the net today - quite informative:

http://www.links.nectec.or.th/~thep/thaisupp/

[Indic-computing-devel] Localisation on Personal Access Devices

[Trevor W. <tre...@ya...>]

Hello there guys/gals...;)

  At the lab i am working with some Handheld personal
access devices of the likes of the Ipaq h3650-h3850 on
which i have gnu-linux up nd running.

  I hav quite an uphill task here....but i am sure
with the community support nd pple like u to help me
out with it..............this will turn out to be a
swell of a challenge...;)

  Since u'll have been working with localisation
issues related to the desktop x86 config's for such a
long time.....it was obvious that we should begin this
thread here.

 As of now.....my objective at the lab is to have
Localisation work started on these Personal Access
devices as i have mentioned above.  Encore, one of the
constituents of the Simputer trust has  also promised
a Commercially available framework sometime down the
line that would enable third party application
developers to add value to their product by
integrating Local language support in a modular form
onto the Simputer.

 All that sounds hunky dory......but for Bigger issues
like the Simputer itself, nd biggest of all the
COMMERCIAL ness of the Framework for Localisation.

 Pls help me get started with this initiative which i
could help snowball into larger efforts targeted
towards Localisation on the available Handhelds in the
market as of now.....

 My focus being on......

--> Ipaq h3600-h3800-h3900 series.
--> Sharp Zaurus 
--> Simputer...................if i am ever able to
lay my hands on the mean baby...:)

 Ur bouques/brickbats r invited ASAP.

Trevor 



 






=====
( >-    GNU/LINUX, It's all about CHOICE      -< )
/~\    __  http://www.qmailtheeasyway.com __   /~\
|  \) /    mailto: tre...@me...   \ (/ |
|_|_  \      Research Asst, MediaLab        / _|_|
       \___________________________________/

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Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Baiju M <mal...@ya...>]

> - mozilla can be configured to use fonts such as
> mangal/raghu/tunga

If do so, will it support GSUB? 
(In a similar way of Yudit)
 
> - The resultant text  has the CMAP functionality, but
>   is missing the GSUB functionality. In other words, I see the
> correct
>   glyphs, but glyph substitution ("joining") is not done.
> 
> A quick search found this statement:
> 
>
http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/freetype/2002-June/002387.html

These GSUB and other advanced OTF table support is going to be
solved by using FreeType Layout library, let us wait for some
time.

http://www.freetype.org/ftlayout/index.html

Regards,
Baiju M


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[Indic-computing-devel] Freetype/OpenType support in XFree86

[Arun S. <ar...@sh...>]

I spent some time today looking at the progress in integrating freetype2
support in XFree86.

http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/fonts/2002-April/001483.html

I downloaded the patches and recompiled XFree86-4.2.0 from source. The
resultant mkfontdir, libXfont.so and XFree86 (the X server) provide the
following functionality:

- I could copy an open type font to a xfree86 dir and run mkfontdir and
  it recognized it and added it to fonts.dir 

- xlsfonts displays open type fonts in the listing

- mozilla can be configured to use fonts such as mangal/raghu/tunga

- The resultant text  has the CMAP functionality, but
  is missing the GSUB functionality. In other words, I see the correct
  glyphs, but glyph substitution ("joining") is not done.

A quick search found this statement:

http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/freetype/2002-June/002387.html

Task #1:

It looks like the indiX code already has the GSUB support - but it's
#ifdef INDIC_SUPPORT. Could we generalize it a bit and feed it to the
freetype developers ? That seems to be the simplest way to get open type
support into XFree86.

Task #2:

Once that happens, the only missing piece will be the shaping engine.
Keyur and other indiX folks, are you working on making them loadable
modules ? Some messages on mail archives seemed to suggest that you are
working on making them loadable modules, so that they could be installed
on top of standard distributions.

	-Arun

[Indic-computing-devel] more on lekho and other stuffs

[Sayamindu D. <unm...@So...>]

Hi,
there's a commercial ($$$hareware) font listed in the lekho website
called code2000 that supports bangla ligature forms.
according to the file provided with the font 

        Code2000 now has OpenType tables for some scripts. Gurmukhi and
        Tamil tables are now completed, as far as I can tell. This is my
        second shot at OpenType tables for Bengali, and any comments or
        suggestions for improvement in the Bengali coverage are welcome.
        The Bengali glyphs are not quite finished, and several are a bit
        rough. Much work remains to be done for Devanagari (but, there
        are several improvements in the Devanagari OpenType tables with
        this version.) and other Indic scripts. 
        
Has anyone used this font before??
I installed it in my box, and I could see the bangla Unicode characters
in Netscape 6.2 and IE 6.0 (windoze), and Konqueror
I could not test the yuktakshars, as I am yet to figure out how to write
them in "Lekho" 
any ideas - anyone??
-sdg-

        




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proportional to the number of Microsoft products installed.

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