[Indic-computing-users] hint! hint!

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

hi all,

when it comes to indic font development, i see an iceberg ahead.

there seems to be not sufficient expertise or knowledge-sharing, when it 
comes to hinting.

in fact the problem is two-fold:

1) we must develop type-set quality, professional fonts, not just 
"functional" fonts.

for this we must have our glyphs expertly designed, with a good and sensitive 
understanding of curves, weights, proportions, ink-trapping, 'readablity', 
style-consistency, etc.

2) then, we must hint them correctly. and test them on different rendering 
engines and devices, at different resolutions, especially coarse and/or low 
resolutions.

i find it more important to have a high-quality, professional-typeset ready 
font, with a limited glyph-set, rather than one with a huge glyph-set, but 
with lack of these two important fundamentals.

on this, i propose the following action:

we must announce and hold another indic font development workshop. focussed 
*just* on expert glyph design, and on hinting, how to hint, hinting methods, 
hinting tools, hinting rocket science, hinting issues, hinting renderings in 
different software, hinting testing, and so on.

imagine the scale of the problem we may create, if we encourage lots of 
people to start developing fonts, without these two basic issues solidly 
understood and without teaching and sharing these concepts and techniques.

whaddya say, guys?

hint: say yes.

:-)
LL