[Indic-computing-devel] Photofont

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

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