[Indic-computing-devel] Roadmap - suggestions

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

Hi,
 few suggestion on the roadmap ( http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/roadmap/index.html )
 Right now only covered  first two sections. More to follow later.

First of all we need to use a common notation method & terminology. 
 TODO --> So two more things to add (notation technique & glossary of terminology)
 Few sugg.
   - Use Unicode naming technique for script/language alphabets.
   - Suitable abbreviations for commonly used phrases. 

 ********************************************************************
1) Language Information

  KN-i  Collect language information for Kannada
  TL-i  Collect language information for Telugu
  HN-i  Collect language information for Hindi
  MT-i  Collect language information for Marathi
  GR-i  Collect language information for Gurmukhi
  ... repeat for other languages as volunteers contribute ...
 -----------------------------------------------------

This should actually go by Script -> Languages using the script . Some languages written using diff scripts can be taken seperatly.

Define What we mean by language information ?

  For a script :
   a. The basic character set -   Consonants (C), vowels (V), vowel modifiers(M), diacritics (D), punctuation  etc.
   b. Glyph set for this basic set.
   c. Rules for syllable formation - 
	consonant-vowel  - C V , C V M, C V D 
        consonant-consonant - tuples - C C , triples -  C C C , quads - C C C C etc. 
		List all possible (which are actually used , now or were at some point of time) with suitable
		examples
  	how modifiers , diacritics , punctuation are used?
   d. complete Glyph set for (c)
   e. Writing rules
        writing direction
        word breaking
        line breaking
   f. Collation rules
	Sort order
   g. TODO - add more                          

  For each language -
     Info for all (a) to (f).
     Language rules may override script rules, esp. (c), (e) & (f).
***********************************************
 
2) Fonts: Create a collection of indic fonts
  Fn.1  Sponsor creation of fonts (corporate sponsorship?)
  Fn.2  Collect free fonts on the Internet
  Fn.3  Document existing fonts: availability, characteristics, encodings etc.
  Fn.4  package fonts for use in popular open-source OSes (ie. install documentation, user documents etc)
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
We need free & open source fonts
  - Define open source font .
     - font licensed under an open source license
     - all font data available in portable format , this includes foll.
         - outline data
         - mapping tables
         - opentype tables

  - List out complete glyph set for each language, which can be used as base by font designers.
     A minimal Glyph set usable for 8 bit encoded fonts
     A maximal set having all possible glyphs, used by multibyte encoded fonts - unicode fonts, opentype fonts etc.
  - A howto/tutorial on creating an opentype font from an existing TTF one - supplemented by examples, with font data.
  - TODO - add more

***********************************************

Karunakar