indic-computing-users — Discussing the usage of indian language capable tools

[Indic-computing-users] Talk at IIT on IndLinux/Computing for the masses

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

------------------
Speaker: Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan, Media Lab Asia. 
                                                     
Date:   18th October, Friday                          
                                                     
Venue:  KReSIT, Room No.301                           
                                                     ,
IIT Bombay.
Time:   3.30 PM                                       
                                                     
Title:  Ind Linux/Computing for the masses            

Abstract                                              
======

For digital technology to reach the masses, the technology has to speak 
the common man/woman's language. Sadly, most software, operating systems  
and applications sold in India are in English. To break this logjam and 
the market, Indlinux.org is localizing Linux in Indian languages and  
plans to distribute it free of cost across India. A localized version of 
Linux in Hindi is in an advanced state of development and will be  
demonstrated during this talk.

The talk with be in two parts; the first part consisting of an overview
by Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan and Prakash Advani, co-founders of the
project. This will be followed by a demonstration of the software and a 
brief overview of what localisation involves by G Karunakar, which will  
cover:

o Internationalization & Localisation basics.
o The POSIX                                                      
o GNU Gettext model                                     
o The toolkit approaches 
o How it all fits in.                                   
o What we are doing 
o Fonts development
o Input methods                                         
o Translations                                          
o Current areas of work 
o Areas you can contribute/do                           
o QT / KDE                                              
o Mozilla
o OpenOffice                                            

Conclusion                                            
Q & A                                                 
                                                      
For more information about IndLinux, see
www.indlinux.org      
-----------------------

[Indic-computing-users] Re: [LAP] Re: Indian language font contest (suggestion from Delhi)

[LinuxLingam <lin...@bh...>]

On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:41 pm, Guntupalli Karunakar wrote:

>  I know couple of them.
>   Ravi Pande <panravi at yahoo dot com>, freelancer based in Pune ,
> Was working with CDAC doing most of their fonts with experience in
> Opentype also.
>   K S Rohilla <ksrohilla at hotmail dot com>, based in Gurgaon,
> Working for Summit India. Has exp. with Unicode fonts.
>
> Regards,
> Karunakar

thanks for the names. will contact them. need more names of people based in 
the NCR for the moment. does anybody know indian language calligraphers, as 
well?

LL

[Indic-computing-users] Windows IME for XFree86

[LinuxLingam <lin...@bh...>]

while pango is under development, Wineinput seems to be a quick 'n dirty 
solution for IME, though i do have my reservations on Wine, and this approach 
of incorporating an IME.
in any case, fyi:


Wineinput 0.2 
http://freshmeat.net/releases/100148/

    Wineinput is an effort to port a Windows IME (Input Method Editor) to
    XFree86 using WINE. It can be used to input CJK characters using a
    Windows IME directly through XIM. 

LL

Re: [Indic-computing-users] [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[LinuxLingam <lin...@bh...>]

On Wednesday 16 October 2002 05:01 pm, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja wrote:

> Font and keyboard layout have got nothing to do with each
> other. The job of the keyboard driver is to interpret the
> keystrokes and send the appropriate ASCII/Unicode code to the
> OS. It is the job of the rendering engine to use the font and
> display the text. Hence discussions about keyboard layouts
> does not fit into the discussions about fonts.

what you state is correct. unfortunately, the keyboard layout is important, 
since i) students and the population at large still does not know even if a 
standard keyboard layout exists. 2) shusha works on the english qwerty 
displaying indian equivalent, 3) lack of standards leads to several problems. 
4) in any case, it is important for students and all others to know, that the 
inscript keyboard exists, and that in a short time, they can learn how to 
type, and even touch type, on an english qwerty keyboard, for their indian 
languages.
i have personally spent time in schools giving a free talk on indian language 
coding and type coding, and demoed how hindi and english work simultaneously 
under windoze xp. amazingly, not a single person in the audience knew till 
that time, that such a thing exists and that it works this way....

> In Kannada we have coined the word "aksharashaili" (taken from
> Samskrit) for font.

thanks for that term. will remember to use it more often.

LL

[Indic-computing-users] indian fonts - issues

[LinuxLingam <lin...@bh...>]

On Wednesday 16 October 2002 10:23 am, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja wrote:
> I have some reservations here. The process of making a font
> is the job of professionals. I don't think some students
> can do a good job.

i agree with you. i do not expect the students to be professional 
calligraphers and/or typographers, much less professional digital 
typographers.

the objective is to get the students community excited, enthusiastic, 
interested, about this "obscure" art&science, appreciate its significance and 
impact on our culture, and certainly develop appreciation and sensitivity 
towards typography and our language.

by making it under the gpl license, i hope the more enthusiastic, and/or the 
professionals, will clean up and further refine the projects. in turn, this 
will lead to further learning and understanding for all.


>
> As of now, since Akruti has released a lot of fonts in
> public domain, there is no immediate need of making
> Truetype fonts. No doubt TTF are needed, but the current
> priority should be converting the public domain TTF to OTF.

akruti's postive and wonderful initiative came in much after the contest had 
been finalized. perhaps at another school event, this could be taken up. will 
work on this suggestion.

my earlier emails also mention the scope, diversity, and depth of indian 
language projects that need to be undertaken, and my heart wishes this 
happens as a jungle-fire movement in our academia. if experts, professionals, 
consultants, assist and help with their expertise and share their knowledge 
and wisdom, would be truly spectacular.

> Note: I don't worry about pselling mixtakes

eye don't care about smelling miss takes either!

:-)
LL

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Re: [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[<al...@ya...>]

 --- Ravikant <rav...@sa...> wrote: > 
> 
> 'Aksharshaili' sounds good, better than 'mudralipi' because mudralipi has the
> 
> imprint of print technology on it. My own term for fonts, therefore, is 
> 'compulipi' = compu(ter)+lipi. 

Aksharashaili, imo is quite an intutive name.
I liked quite a few of the translations by KGP, particularly the ones for
software(tantransha) and hardware(yantransha). The beauty of these translations
is that they can be used as is for most Indian languges.

Which is why I was asking if they are available somewhere on the web: if not, I
could put it up on my site if there are no copyright issues with the authors;
many thanks to them.
Alok

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Re: [Indic-computing-users] fontset?

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

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 12:48:52 +0530
"Tapan S. Parikh" <ta...@ya...> wrote:

> 
> I am monkeying around i18nizing a Gtk-2 app, and I am finding the
> only way to set a font that I am able to view properly is to put an
> explicit font-name setting in the .rc file.  I am also finding that
> the fontset setting doesnt work, I think Xft doesnt handle it
> properly...
> 
> This causes a big problem because then it means that its hard to
> specify more than 1 font for an application, meaning if that font
> doesnt have all 
> chars u want u are in trouble...  anyone know of any workaround of
> getting this to work using fontset or some other less bruteforce
> mechanism?  I think the other option is to put some family settings
> in.xftconfig....  
> 
> The Xft coordination with Gtk / Pango folks could be alot better it
> seems...
> 
> i just spent the last two days i18n-izing my project.  lots of
> caveats and problems that are VERY poorly documented on the web... 

 Its all in here

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/index.en.html#contents

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/ch-library.en.html#s-gettextize


> Here are just a list of things I can think of:
> 
> - getting your gettext/po architecture and coordinating with
> your Makefile structure
> - populating and installing po files using some editor
> - installing proper fonts
> - configuring X and Xft to use those fonts
> - configuring your app to use the correct fonts
> - setting and using locales, etc.
> 
> So far Ive got the thing working and integrated nicely with my build
> process, but I have to admit there is a good 20-30% of things I did
> above I dont even understand...  It seems that not too many people
> have gotten to work on actually localising apps yet so the
> documentation on the web is a little sparse...
> 
 Nope. The job is actually divided. Programmers do the i18n part,
translators  & maintainers do the l10n part. this they just do once,
with autoconf/automake its much simpler. The gettext info doc has it,
what programmers has to do , what a translator has to do. 

> When I get time Ill write up a quick HOWTO with links about this
> process w/ an emphasis on Indic....
> 
 I can help in it.

Regards,
Karunakar

[Indic-computing-users] Help needed for modifying Akruti Devnagari font.

[Shashank A. <sha...@hb...>]

Hi,

We are working on linux localisation in HBCSE under guidance of Mr.
Nagarjuna. We hv been able to partially transform the font to unicode
mapping. Although we could not figure out where to place the glyphs
required for jodaksharas as no positions are specified for them. 

We are using pfaedit for modifying the font can we use the blank
positions ( marked with a black sqare and a '?' sign embeded in it )
for these extra glyphs.


Shashank

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Re: [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[Ravikant <rav...@sa...>]

'Aksharshaili' sounds good, better than 'mudralipi' because mudralipi has the 
imprint of print technology on it. My own term for fonts, therefore, is 
'compulipi' = compu(ter)+lipi. 

Thoughts?
ravikant



On Thursday 17 Oct 2002 8:22 am, Alok Kumar wrote:
> >In Kannada we have coined the word "aksharashaili" (taken from
>
>  Samskrit) for font.
> Sounds like a good word :). I used the word मुद्रलिपि
> (mudralipi) in Hindi.
>
> Do you have the Kannada glossary online somewhere? It would be worth
> referring even for other Indian languages.
> Alok
>
>
> =====
> कैसी रही? This message was sent from alkuma "at" yahoo "dot"
> com To read hindi message [Instructions for IE]
> 1. set view->encoding : utf8
> 2. set Tools->Internet Options->General->Font->Devanagari script : choose
> any font. If no font is listed, download the font from http://bbchindi.com
> . 3. set Tools->Internet Options->General->Languages : add hi to the list
> To write in hindi on Windows machine: http://geocities.com/hanu_man_ji All
> done? Now try http://hindi.mozzie.org
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
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>        visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com
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>
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Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest suggestion

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

--- Alok Kumar <al...@ya...> wrote:
> > Subject: Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font
> contest (suggestion
> > from Delhi)
> > To: ind...@in...
> > 
> > 
> > --- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...> wrote:
> > 
> > > As of now, since Akruti has released a lot of fonts in 
> > > public domain,
> > 
> > Its not not in public domain, its copyrighted by "Cyberscape
> > Multimedia limited" (Its clearly printed in all fonts). It
> is a
> > free font released under GNU General Public License.
> 
> What's the difference? 

 Public domain software is software that is *not* copyrighted.

For more information :
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html


Regards,
Baiju M


=====


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[Indic-computing-users] Re: [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[<al...@ya...>]

>In Kannada we have coined the word "aksharashaili" (taken from 
 Samskrit) for font.
Sounds like a good word :). I used the word मुद्रलिपि
(mudralipi) in Hindi.

Do you have the Kannada glossary online somewhere? It would be worth referring
even for other Indian languages.
Alok
 

=====
कैसी रही? This message was sent from alkuma "at" yahoo "dot" com 
To read hindi message [Instructions for IE]
1. set view->encoding : utf8
2. set Tools->Internet Options->General->Font->Devanagari script : choose any font. If no font is listed, download the font from http://bbchindi.com .
3. set Tools->Internet Options->General->Languages : add hi to the list
To write in hindi on Windows machine: http://geocities.com/hanu_man_ji
All done? Now try http://hindi.mozzie.org

________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest suggestion

[<al...@ya...>]

> Subject: Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest (suggestion
> from Delhi)
> To: ind...@in...
> 
> 
> --- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...> wrote:
> 
> > As of now, since Akruti has released a lot of fonts in 
> > public domain,
> 
> Its not not in public domain, its copyrighted by "Cyberscape
> Multimedia limited" (Its clearly printed in all fonts). It is a
> free font released under GNU General Public License.

What's the difference? 
Curious,
Alok

________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
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Re: [Indic-computing-users] [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[Dr. U.B. P. <pav...@vi...>]

> 3) qwerty does devanagri?
> how do i type devanagri or other indian language scripts, on the
> horrid qwerty keyboard? use the INSCRIPT keyboard layout. since all
> indian languages are similar, the INSCRIPT keyboard layout is
> universal for all our official languages. the idea is pretty simple:
> keep all the consonants on one side of the keyboard, and all the
> vowels on the other side. split a varg into two, and you've got the
> entire indian script on a 101-keys keyboard.
> www.indlinux.org/keymap/keymaps.php [search the web for more inscript
> stuff]
> 
> 4) want a INSCRIPT keyboard tutor? this one works in dos.
> http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/down.asp

Font and keyboard layout have got nothing to do with each 
other. The job of the keyboard driver is to interpret the 
keystrokes and send the appropriate ASCII/Unicode code to the 
OS. It is the job of the rendering engine to use the font and 
display the text. Hence discussions about keyboard layouts 
does not fit into the discussions about fonts.
 
> get inspired, create some indian language fonts under the gpl license.
> recite the lat lakaar of the font dhaatu:
> 
> fonttii, fontta, fonttanti,
> fontsii, fontha, fontthhaa,
> fontaami, fontaava, fontaama.

In Kannada we have coined the word "aksharashaili" (taken from 
Samskrit) for font.

Rgds,
Pavanaja-----------------------------------------------------
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

Re: [Indic-computing-users] [LAP] more font-design references (fwd)

[Dr. U.B. P. <pav...@vi...>]

There was a link to the free OpenType Font Developer's Toolkit 
at Adobe's site. I got it from there (very lengthy procedure 
to get it, though). Now I don't find it there.

-Pavanaja


> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> 
> some additional, mostly advanced and further research oriented urls.
> for those who really want to dive deep, very deep, into digital
> typography.
> 
> http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technotes/fonts.html
> 
> http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/type/main.html
> 
> http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/main.html
> 
> 
> this gives u the specs of opentype 
> http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/opentype/main.html
> 
> 
> microsoft on truetype:
> http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/default.asp
> 
> excellent flash-driven website, inspirational design stuff:
> http://counterspace.motivo.com/
> 
> ***
> LinuxLingam
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
> Welcome to geek heaven.
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> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indic-computing-users
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> 
> 

-----------------------------------------------------
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

Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest (suggestion from Delhi)

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

--- "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pav...@vi...> wrote:

> As of now, since Akruti has released a lot of fonts in 
> public domain,

Its not not in public domain, its copyrighted by "Cyberscape
Multimedia limited" (Its clearly printed in all fonts). It is a
free font released under GNU General Public License.

Regards,
Baiiju M
P.S : 

=====


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Re: [Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest (suggestion from Delhi)

[Dr. U.B. P. <pav...@vi...>]

I have some reservations here. The process of making a font 
is the job of professionals. I don't think some students 
can do a good job.

As of now, since Akruti has released a lot of fonts in 
public domain, there is no immediate need of making 
Truetype fonts. No doubt TTF are needed, but the current 
priority should be converting the public domain TTF to OTF. 

To do that the steps are -

1. Identify the extra glyhs needed for each language
2. Make these glyphs in TTF. There is no need to draw the 
glyphs on paper, scan them, etc. Just use the existing 
glyphs in the same TTF, copy, paste, combine, etc.
3. Take this font to VOLT and add Opentype tables
4. If possible, do the hinting (tough job)

Probably these steps, except the hinting can be entrusted 
to students with proper guidance/supervison by expert(s).

Rgds,
Pavanaja


> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> 
> indian language font contest
> 
> objective: an inter-school computer events and competitions, a
> font-design contest must be organized. the participants must design
> indian language fonts, from any of the 16 officially recognized
> languages of india.
> 
> vision: indian languages hardly have any choices in indian script
> fonts. most are poorly or even incorrectly encoded. thus a whole layer
> of language and type-encoding, never really developed in india. for
> example: indian language search engines, proper support in
> industry-standard databases, indian language ocr, handwriting
> recognition, language translation, text to speech, speech to text,
> universal spell checkers and grammar checkers, etc etc etc.
> 
> logistix:
> 
> 1) the correct standard is to encode indian languages using the
> unicode standard. see unicode.org for further info. this is the
> universal encoding system for all languages of the world, past,
> present, future.
> 
> 2) the font format must be opentype font. see opentype.org for more
> info. opentype is a single file font. whew! and this single file works
> across mac, win, linux, unix, and even savvy handheld and other
> devices. (sort of the jpg of font formats). the opentype format is
> also more compact and compressed.
> 
> 3) to correctly type on 'qwerty' keyboards, the indian language script
> has been standardized on its layout on the qwerty keyboard. this is
> called INSCRIPT. 
> 
> 4) an exhaustive amount of reference and research material on type,
> type encoding, type design, type file formats, unicode, indian
> language encoding, etc. has bee compiled and made available to the
> schools on a cd. you are free to copy and further distribute this cd,
> for your own reference and research. this reference includes the
> unicode tables for indian languages, the INSCRIPT layout of the
> keyboard for indian languages, and tonnes of other essential stuff.
> 
> 5) participating school students have to design a hindi language font,
> based on the devanagri script of hindi.
> 
> 6) the font should be complete, must have all the characters required
> for the full and complete use of the font. all characters are defined
> in the unicode table, provided on the cd.
> 
> 7) the font should be compiled as an opentype font.
> 
> 8) to design the font, a free of cost, and freedom-based software,
> such as pfaedit, may be used. this application runs natively on linux.
> it also runs under windows using another application called 'cygwin.' 
> the online help and documentation of pfaedit is excellent and gets any
> beginner started within a few hours of reading thru it.
> 
> 9) participants may also use other alternative software such as
> freehand fontographer, fontlab3 or fontlab4, or even other software,
> mentioned on the reference cd.
> 
> 10) a free utility, called VOLT, available from microsoft's website,
> also allows designers to convert fonts natively created as truetype
> fonts (ttf) in fontographer or other apps, to be converted into
> opentype fonts.
> 
> 11) the font wil be the copyright and credited to the font designer.
> the designer may name the font anything they wish, as long as it
> conforms to filesystem requirements and naming conventions.
> 
> 12) the font and even the source file, must be published under the gpl
> license. (www.gpl.org) for more info. in effect, it must be free and
> guarantee certain freedom to its users. and others may also further
> modfiy and refine it.
> 
> contest rules:
> 
> 1) the font design contest will be launched at modern school vasant
> vihar's inter-school computer event, called MODEM, for 2002.
> 
> 2) the particiapting schools may start designing the font a few weeks
> before the contest, and submit the final file at the contest.
> 
> 3) the design must be original, and not another existing design ripped
> off or re-encoded.
> 
> 4) for the purposes of the contest, the participants must bring their
> source material, such as hand-drawn characters which they may have
> scanned and used as templates, as well as test printouts, sample
> display prints, notes, design notes, etc. the display output as
> samples must be on different media: such as desktop bubblejet
> printers, and especially on postscript laser printers, at 600 dpi, and
> higher.
> 
> 5) full freedom is granted in choosing the design and style: it could
> be for a book's body text, or for decorative displays, or for
> signboards, or whatever style or mood the designers think best.
> 
> 6) the contest will be evalauted by an independent jury on the
> following criterion:
> 
>  a) conforming to unicode.
>  b) legibility of design at smallest to largest sizes.
>  c) smoothness of the fonts shapes. it must not appear coarse or rough
>  at any 
> size.
>  d) aspects such as hinting, though optional, will get extra points.
>  hinting 
> a font allows it to be tweaked slightly depending on the size and
> output required. this makes a font even more clear and legible. more
> info on the reference cd.
> 
> 7) a standard, sample of text will be used at the contest, to test the
> font, to ensure it has all the characters and designs.
> 
> :-)
> linuxlingam
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 

-----------------------------------------------------
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

[Indic-computing-users] [LAP] more font-design references (fwd)

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

some additional, mostly advanced and further research oriented urls. for 
those who really want to dive deep, very deep, into digital typography.

http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technotes/fonts.html

http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/type/main.html

http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/main.html


this gives u the specs of opentype 
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/opentype/main.html


microsoft on truetype:
http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/default.asp

excellent flash-driven website, inspirational design stuff:
http://counterspace.motivo.com/

***
LinuxLingam

[Indic-computing-users] [LAP] font design references (fwd)

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

From the LAP mailing list.... andLinuxLingam <lin...@bh...>


---------- Forwarded message ----------

excited about designing indian language fonts
to help solve our culture's digital quagmire?
. . .and win a font design contest or two as well?

don't know where to start?

behold! just found some urls scribbled on the back
of palm leafs and mango leafs, from the forgotten chapters
of panini's sutras.

1) unicode it!
unicode is the best way to encode indian languages,
and all languages of the world, past, present, future.
www.unicode.org
www.indlinux.org/links.php

2) opentype the file format.
go beyond truetype or postscript font file formats, of the previous decade.
boldly embrace the new opentype (*.otf) file format. one file format, for all 
operating systems and platforms, one single font file, and highly compact 
filesize. (what *.jpg is to image formats, *.otf is to type, without the 
copyrights and other issues.)
www.opentype.org
www.adobe.com/type/topics/main.html
www.microsoft.com/typography/default.asp
[the adobe site has a huge repository of pdf files that give you the lowdown 
and technical details of anything and everything to do with type. the ms site 
is also quite exhaustive. do check out the VOLT tool on its site]

3) qwerty does devanagri?
how do i type devanagri or other indian language scripts, on the horrid 
qwerty keyboard? use the INSCRIPT keyboard layout. since all indian languages 
are similar, the INSCRIPT keyboard layout is universal for all our official 
languages. the idea is pretty simple: keep all the consonants on one side of 
the keyboard, and all the vowels on the other side. split a varg into two, 
and you've got the entire indian script on a 101-keys keyboard.
www.indlinux.org/keymap/keymaps.php
[search the web for more inscript stuff]

4) want a INSCRIPT keyboard tutor? this one works in dos.
http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/down.asp

5) some amazing downloads on indian languages, as well as a good source of 
references and resource, by the Department of IT.
technology development for indian languages (TDIL)
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/

6) okay, so you wanna whip those bezier curves into shape and design the 
font, character-by-character? you need pfaedit. this free and freedom-based 
software, published under the gpl license, is similar to fontographer, the 
commercial font design tool from macromedia. pfaedit has a graphic user 
interface, the provided documentation, tutorials, and reference material is 
excellent. read the fine manual. and get started. did i mention pfaedit works 
natively on linux, and needs another free software called cygwin to work 
under winXX? cygwin gives you a unix-like environment under win, including 
the Xwindows....
http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/
http://cygwin.com

[btw, pfaedit works under gnulinux, solaris, irix, freebsd, netbsd, macos/x, 
openVMS for alpha.
u may also find some other tools mentioned on the ms and adobe site, but most 
of these are proprietory, commercial, and some not updated for quite some 
time]


7) what's gpl, in english? the gnu public license, that guarantees freedom in 
software. find out more about freedom-based software.
www.gnu.org

still need some more hand-holding?
goto linux-delhi.org, subscribe to a mailing list, preferably the 
sc...@li... (for the moment) and tell us how deeply you searched 
for answers before posting your query (!).

get inspired, create some indian language fonts under the gpl license.
recite the lat lakaar of the font dhaatu:

fonttii, fontta, fonttanti,
fontsii, fontha, fontthhaa,
fontaami, fontaava, fontaama.

:-)

LinuxLingam

[Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest (suggestion from Delhi)

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

Some interesting ideas... FN

On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, LinuxLingam wrote:


> hi fred,
> 
> thanks for pumping up the volume on that font contest am trying to bring 
> alive in schools.
> 
> thankfully, the gnulinux community has shown encouraging response, and is 
> helping out with several issues.
> 
> would be fabulous if indic font-design contests are held more regularly, and 
> more widely, across indian schools and colleges. plus, among the hardcore 
> coding community, if indian language coding solutions could be encouraged 
> through friendly contests and competitions through inter-school and 
> inter-college contests.
> 
> there's lots to be done, and we need to catch up on lost decades.
> 
> of course, all the work needs to be done on free and freedom-based tools, and 
> published under the gnu gpl, and gnu fdl license.
> 
> do please spread the word.
> 
> secondly, if u know indian font designers, who appreciate unicode, opentype, 
> have a sensitive and expert eye on those bezier curves, and know how to 
> flourish a brush in calligraphy, do please forward us some names. we need 
> such people to mentor and evaluate the font designs.
> 
> the first set of designs created is just the beginning.
> :-)
> LL
> 

[Indic-computing-users] NEWS: Text editor like 'Vi' but can't implement Kannada/Hindi

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
   Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:16:54 -0700 (PDT)
   From: anoop bhat <ano...@ya...>
Subject: Programming in Linux

Hi,
   Can anyone please guide me on implementing Unicode
for programs written in C/c++ in Linux. I am doing a
text editor for Linux, similar to 'vi' but i am unable
to implement langauges like kannada and hindi. 

Thanks in Advance,
Anoop

__________________________________________________

[Indic-computing-users] Indian language font contest (suggestion from Delhi)

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

indian language font contest

objective: an inter-school computer events and competitions, a font-design 
contest must be organized. the participants must design indian language 
fonts, from any of the 16 officially recognized languages of india.

vision: indian languages hardly have any choices in indian script fonts. most 
are poorly or even incorrectly encoded. thus a whole layer of language and 
type-encoding, never really developed in india. for example: indian language 
search engines, proper support in industry-standard databases, indian 
language ocr, handwriting recognition, language translation, text to speech, 
speech to text, universal spell checkers and grammar checkers, etc etc etc.

logistix:

1) the correct standard is to encode indian languages using the unicode 
standard. see unicode.org for further info. this is the universal encoding 
system for all languages of the world, past, present, future.

2) the font format must be opentype font. see opentype.org for more info. 
opentype is a single file font. whew! and this single file works across mac, 
win, linux, unix, and even savvy handheld and other devices. (sort of the jpg 
of font formats). the opentype format is also more compact and compressed.

3) to correctly type on 'qwerty' keyboards, the indian language script has 
been standardized on its layout on the qwerty keyboard. this is called 
INSCRIPT. 

4) an exhaustive amount of reference and research material on type, type 
encoding, type design, type file formats, unicode, indian language encoding, 
etc. has bee compiled and made available to the schools on a cd. you are free 
to copy and further distribute this cd, for your own reference and research. 
this reference includes the unicode tables for indian languages, the INSCRIPT 
layout of the keyboard for indian languages, and tonnes of other essential 
stuff.

5) participating school students have to design a hindi language font, based 
on the devanagri script of hindi.

6) the font should be complete, must have all the characters required for the 
full and complete use of the font. all characters are defined in the unicode 
table, provided on the cd.

7) the font should be compiled as an opentype font.

8) to design the font, a free of cost, and freedom-based software, such as 
pfaedit, may be used. this application runs natively on linux. it also runs 
under windows using another application called 'cygwin.'  the online help and 
documentation of pfaedit is excellent and gets any beginner started within a 
few hours of reading thru it.

9) participants may also use other alternative software such as freehand 
fontographer, fontlab3 or fontlab4, or even other software, mentioned on the 
reference cd.

10) a free utility, called VOLT, available from microsoft's website, also 
allows designers to convert fonts natively created as truetype fonts (ttf) in 
fontographer or other apps, to be converted into opentype fonts.

11) the font wil be the copyright and credited to the font designer. the 
designer may name the font anything they wish, as long as it conforms to 
filesystem requirements and naming conventions.

12) the font and even the source file, must be published under the gpl 
license. (www.gpl.org) for more info. in effect, it must be free and 
guarantee certain freedom to its users. and others may also further modfiy 
and refine it.

contest rules:

1) the font design contest will be launched at modern school vasant vihar's 
inter-school computer event, called MODEM, for 2002.

2) the particiapting schools may start designing the font a few weeks before 
the contest, and submit the final file at the contest.

3) the design must be original, and not another existing design ripped off or 
re-encoded.

4) for the purposes of the contest, the participants must bring their source 
material, such as hand-drawn characters which they may have scanned and used 
as templates, as well as test printouts, sample display prints, notes, design 
notes, etc. the display output as samples must be on different media: such as 
desktop bubblejet printers, and especially on postscript laser printers, at 
600 dpi, and higher.

5) full freedom is granted in choosing the design and style: it could be for 
a book's body text, or for decorative displays, or for signboards, or 
whatever style or mood the designers think best.

6) the contest will be evalauted by an independent jury on the following 
criterion:

	a) conforming to unicode.
	b) legibility of design at smallest to largest sizes.
	c) smoothness of the fonts shapes. it must not appear coarse or rough at any 
size.
	d) aspects such as hinting, though optional, will get extra points. hinting 
a font allows it to be tweaked slightly depending on the size and output 
required. this makes a font even more clear and legible. more info on the 
reference cd.

7) a standard, sample of text will be used at the contest, to test the font, 
to ensure it has all the characters and designs.

:-)
linuxlingam

[Indic-computing-users] [Fwd: [locales] W3C-I18N-WG Web services TF: Call for Participation]

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

This could be one area where the groups can play a role, esp as this 
relates to i18nizing & l10n of web services, the much touted next 
information revolution.

Karunakar

[Indic-computing-users] NEWS: Internet gives Urdu fresh lease of life (New Delhi report)

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

Internet gives Urdu fresh lease of life  (repeating)

By Ehtashamuddin Khan, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, Oct 12 (IANS) The elegant language Urdu, many say, is dying.

But its protagonists Ghalib, Mir, Iqbal and Faiz are now much more
accessible to the world than ever before, thanks to the Internet.

And it is not only for those who know the script but for all those who love
the language that evolved in the 13th century due to a strong Persian
influence.

Poems, novels and essays of many leading Urdu scholars are available on
Internet sites that also have English translations.

Urdu lovers in the U.S., Pakistan and India have hosted most of these Web
sites with the intension of popularising the language across the globe.

Ahmad Suhail, a U.S.-based scholar, has portrayed this whole new world of
Urdu on the Internet in his essay in a Mumbai-based monthly magazine Shayar.

He says people were sceptical when the Net became popular, thinking it would
hardly be beneficial to Urdu as all its development would be in English.

"But today one can use the Internet without using much of English. And
researches are being conducted on how Urdu-knowing people can benefit. And
there are so many Web sites in this language," writes Suhail.

"There is a Web site called Langoo.com from where one can download an Urdu
keyboard without paying anything. You can even e-mail in Urdu and post your
own poems and write-ups."

Most of the Web sites in Urdu have focussed on famous poets like Ghalib,
Iqbal and Faiz, whose works have been translated into many languages and are
known the world over.

Urdu became popular as a language during Mughal emperor Aurangzeb's reign in
the 17th century. At its peak, Urdu was read and spoken widely across
northern India.

But Urdu fell from grace in the 19th century during British rule. After
India's independence in 1947, Hindi became the national language, sidelining
Urdu further.

In 1947, millions of Urdu-speaking Muslims migrated to Pakistan, which made
Urdu the new country's official language.

In India, according to statistics, just 44 million of the country's one
billion people speak Urdu.

In the last decade, Urdu has slowly been expanding its base to southern
Indian states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. People who migrated
from the Indian subcontinent to other parts of the world have also tried to
preserve the language. Many individuals and groups are doing so by capturing
space on the Internet.

Says Mohammad Ehsan, a research scholar at Aligarh Muslim University who
earlier worked for the Web site urdustan.com: "Our effort was to give a
brief introduction of Urdu to those who don't know it. Some of our contents
were in the Roman script. The idea was to just represent the language in the
cyber world.

"The Web site has debates on different topics and poems and articles of
individuals who contributed to the site. But it was difficult to manage
because we could not find good writers due to lack of funds. There were not
many visitors to our Web site because we could not advertise."

Suhail says most of the Web sites do not have serious content and are mostly
aimed at the layman.

Arjumand Ara, assistant editor of monthly literary magazine Urdu Duniya,
says: "People who know Urdu are not very technology savvy, at least in
India. Though we also run short-term training courses of computer operation
in Urdu, our students hardly know about Urdu Web sites. Even I don't know
much about them."

Adds Mohammad Zahid, a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University here:
"I used to spend a lot of time on the Internet searching for research
material. But most of the stuff there are works of famous scholars that are
easily available in the market. I could not find any mature academic work."

But he still feels the sites are good for the language.

"These sites are good for beginners or those who want to know the language.
Most people can speak and understand Urdu but they cannot read it. For them
the Internet is really useful because there are many Web sites which have
Urdu content written in the Roman script," says Zahid.

--Indo-Asian News Service

[Indic-computing-users] Re: [Howtos]marathi fonts, and TOAST

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

From another mailing list... FN

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002, Ajit Ranade wrote:


> 
> 
> On 11 Oct 2002, Radhakrishnan CV wrote:
> 
> >     >>  Have you developed any fonts?  Or do you have any specific
> >     >> plans to do one?
> > 
> >     manjusha> We are searching for exact requirement.
> > 
> > I guess, you're a native Marathi speaker?  Why not you try to
> > accomplish the following:
> > 
> > 1. a free Marathi MetaFont font in different sizes, shapes and
> >    weights.
> 
> 
> radhakrishnan, 
> 
> as you know, marathi uses devnagari script. the devnag package already
> supports typesetting marathi, as also sanskrit and hindi. and the fonts
> that come along with devnag package, are quite excellent.
> 
> 
> > 2. a pre processor to use this fonts in normal TeX/LaTeX
> 
> the devnag package comes with a preprocessor.
> 
> 
> > 3. a mapping scheme to input Marathi using Roman keyboard
> 
> again, the velthuis scheme (of devnag) supports this. you just type {\dn
> ajit} to get my name typeset in devnagari in the velthuis scheme.
> 
> 
> > 4. Omega Translation Process (OTP) to integrate the fonts into Omega
> >    system which will facilitate multilingual typesetting, also it does
> >    away with the pre-processor
> 
> this would be great. 
> 
> 
> > 5. a decent documentation for the user
> 
> there's always room for more and better documentation. 
> 
> in fact unlike the linux world, i don't find the tex world developing
> HOWTO or mini-HOWTO files. i think this would be a worthwhile project for
> tugindia members.  another great initiative has begun from India, called
> LOST i.e. linux-one-stanza-tip. this a collection of simple linux tips in
> one stanza. (now only if a.r. rehman sets these tips to music, we are all
> set!)
> 
> 
> cheers,
> 
> ajit.
> 
> ps: 
> 
> how about TOAST (tex-one-and-half-stanza-tip)?
> 
> TOAST 1: How to get an underline, which is better than what one gets by
> using tex's command, i.e. which is closer to the baseline of a sentence,
> and not under the "stick-out" letters like "y", "g" etc?
> 
> use:
> 
> \def\undertext#1{$\underline{\smash{\vphantom{y}\raise2pt\hbox{#1}}}$}
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> howtos mailing list
> ho...@fr...
> http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/howtos
> 

[Indic-computing-users] Proceedings for the Indic-Computing Workshop, Bangalore, 15-16th September 2002

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

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 17:41:45 +0530
From: Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <vi...@ek...>
To: Ind...@li...,
indic-computing-devel <ind...@li...>
Subject: Proceedings for the Indic-Computing Workshop, Bangalore,
15-16th September 2002


  Hi All,

I am including with this mail proceedings of the Indic-Computing 
Workshop, Bangalore, 15-16th September 2002. Apologies for the delays as

we were having some reviews on the proceedings. Also included with the 
proceedings are the action points that we had identified as well as 
groups that we had formed amongst the participants present in the
workshop.

We would now like to consolidate the groups formed during the workshop 
as working groups on the projects identified during the workshop. Some 
project coordinators are recommended who would take up the 
responsibility of certain projects and coordinate with various people 
across interest to contribute in the project. Also at the same time an 
effort is also being made to develop some kind of framework for 
building  a consortium to take up the issues to the larger group of 
people involved (stakeholders) users, policy makers, developers, media, 
academia, research & development agencies, Government, Standards 
consortium etc..

All list members are invited to join. It is requested from all to go 
through these actions points and provide feedback, also if anybody wants

to gets in touch with the groups directly email id of the group 
coordinator and project volunteers is also provided. It is suggested to 
all to get in touch with each other on their areas of interest in which 
they would like to contribute.

The proceedings are in rtf & txt, also enclosed is the participants list

and the members who could not join.

Regards

vijay