Can someone answer this? I haven't heard of Oberon S3.
-Pavanaja
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From: ea...@ab...
To: pav...@vi...
Copies to: ea...@ab...
Subject: From Kannada to keyboards - char density ?
Date sent: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 06:27:39 -0800
Dr U B Pavanaja,
I found my way to your URL via:
BBC: Ashok Khosla -> "From Kannada to keyboards"
I'm trying to find out if it is feasible to add 'indian'
scripts to
the operation system (Oberon S3) which I use.
Because I intend to semi-retire in Kerala, Malayalam is the
most
interesting to me. Here is some dialogue that I had on the
user-groups and which shows my aims and my still unanswered
question:
"How many Malalee/Kannada characters are displayed (average),
with the
resolution of 80 latin chars per line ?"
some of my queries: ----------
> > Btw, the unicode chart does show how to render the basic
> > characters, but not all the glyphs. Please see
> > http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D00.pdf
>
> OK this is a MAJOR problem;
> eg: Vowel 0D07 has 5 horizontal lines = 9 layers.
> And then if you accomodate the difference in line thicknesses,
> double this; to need 20 pixel high characters. And retaining the
> traditional proportions, some chars will be 40 pixel wide. You
> can't write many chars to a line. How much info can Simputer's
> display show ?
>
> If the char-set is like latin or Cyrillic (Russian) the task is
> trivial: Just go to an Keralan school(s) with a few scrap machines
> (oberon flies on 386 + 4Mb) and demonstrate to a few student: 1.
> select a new (possibly existing, to be modified) font-set-file. 2.
> select one (at a time) of the 256 char-values. 3. set the char size
> - matrix of pixels. 4. Draw the char as you think it should look by
> toggling the pixels. 5. save the new/updated pixel patterns in the
> chosen font-set-file.
>
> After they have made the font-set and started writing stories, some
> will suggest improvements/modifications. After some time a nice
> font-set will emerge. This is not a technical task, rather an
> artistic one.
>
> Native oberon runs: DOS based, linux based or StandAlone and is
> available free from the university: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/ As I
> remember the DOS based (recomended for beginners, since no separate
> partition is needed) installation is about 1.5 Mb A 3 button mouse
> is highly recomended.
>
> As previously stated: my motivation is to build an Indian user base
> of oberon users, to add contributors which benefits me as a co-user.
> Also to help select staff for my projects.
>
> As linux has great advantages over microsoft for India, oberon can
> even much more, leaverage low power (1st-world scrap) computers than
> linux. Linux is very slow and bulky compared to single user
> multitasking oberon. ----------------
NB. oberon is non-peemptive multitasking, with 'look and feel
alike'
ports for dos-based, linux-based or stand-alone. The
simplest is to
just install the dos-based.
Perhaps the oberon way of having a 'pixel matrix' for each
char,
is not applicable ? Are glyphs patterns: such that "b" an
"p" could
be considered as being constructed by the same pair of
glyphs, which
are repositioned ?
As noted above the existing Oberon makes writing latin,
greek,
cyrillic fonts a trivial task and I want to leaverage
existing
advantages.
This would be great for Indian schools especially considering
the free
software and minimal hardware requirements.
Any opinions would be appreciated. Thanks,
-- Chris Glur.
------- End of forwarded message ----------------------------
--------------------------------
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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