Hi all,
There is a new font technology for the web. It is
called Photofont. The url is www.photofont.com. This
is by the people who make FontLab. This was in the
pipeline for quite some time and now the specs are
there. I had met Mr. Ted Harrison, President of
FontLab Inc. lats Aug. He had mentioned to me about
this new initiative at that time.
When I checked the site and went through the specs I
realised that they don't support all the features of
Opentype fonts, expecially the GSUB and GPOS tables.
Without this support we can not use it for Indic
scripts.
The technology of Photofont is somewhat similar to
dynamic fonts. Each glyph is converted from bitmap
to plain text and then stored in the web server. The
web browser need to get a free plug-in from
Photofont to display the font. There is no need to
have the font installed in the local system. The
process of installing the plug-in has to be done
only once (this was the case with the ActiveX plug-
in for IE browser for PFR fonts, which is defunct
now).
I had sent mails to Ted Harrison about OTF support
in Photofont and the answer was in the negative.
They are not planning to support OTF. But he says
that the specifications are open and we are welcome
to add the support ourselves. I have attached my
mails to Ted and his replies at the end of this
mail. Please take a look at photofont.com, study the
specs and think about extedning the support to OTF.
Any volunteers?
Thanks and regards,
Pavanaja
----------- Begin mail 1 fro Ted --------
Dear Dr. Pavanaja,
> I am bit surprised to
> know that it does not support the Opentype tables like GSub,
> GPos, etc. Without these support we can not use this technology
> for Indic scripts. What are your plans about supporting Opentype
> tables?
Well, I'm sure you noticed that photofonts are not OpenType fonts.
They
are a new bitmap font format. Therefore it is highly likely that they
will never support OT tables.
Regards,
Ted Harrison
FontLab Ltd.
--------------- End mail 1 ----------------------
---------------- Begin mail 2 from Ted --------------
Dear Dr. Pavanaja,,
> In that case, how are you planning to support complex scripts
> (Indic scripts, Arabic, etc)?
>
We are not. However, it is an open specification so anyone who wants
to
add that capability is welcome to come up with a mechanism.
Regards,
Ted Harrison
FontLab Ltd.
------------------ End mail 2 from Ted -------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja
Editor, Vishva Kannada
World's first Internet magazine in Kannada
http://www.vishvakannada.com/
Note: I don't worry about pselling mixtakes
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