Re: [Indic-computing-users] frustrated about IndicComputing

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

Dear LL,

Making a good quality font which joins all the glyphs properly 
and displays properly is NOT just a hinting question. Hinting 
comes at the end. There more issues like appropriate em values, 
weight, width, height, code pages, embeddable, etc. Most 
important factor is to have a good non-intersecting clean 
outline. There are many whitepapers on the subject available on 
the web. Hinting improves the display at small point sizes. The 
problem that you have mentioned has got more to do with good 
design rather than hinting.

Currently all those who are making OTF are concentrating more on 
functionality than on asthetics. Once they have mastered the 
functionality aspect, I am very sure, atleast some of them will 
concentrate on improving the asthetics. 

In fact, OTF technology gives more power to design a superb 
quality font. In case of TTF we are restricted to about 160 
glyphs wheras OTF has no such restriction. This fact is very 
useful for Indic scripts where the total number of combinations 
(V, C, C+V, C+C+V, C+C+C+V, ..etc.) possible is as high as  
15,000 for each language. in OTF, we can have large no. of glyph 
set to take care of many special cases. 

Our aim should be to master the technology, demonstrate it and 
then approach the publishing industry to sponsor high quality 
font development which is quite expensive affair.

Rgds,
Pavanaja

> thirdly, i don't see enough discussion+action on what to do with
> hinting and taking a professional, typeset-ready approach to font
> design.
> 
> a colleague recently tried out milan, and though impressed, asked me
> why the font seemed so broken. i sighed! here comes the hinting issue
> again. grid-fitting, pixel-resolving, and all that.
> 
> i wouldn't like to scare away simple-type endusers with unhinted fonts
> that look formidable.
> 
> to plod ahead, we must walk like an elephant, taking firm, strong,
> carefully meditated, and strategic steps. i already feel quite sad
> about the work in patialia. so *much* work, with some errors in the
> fundamental work. they too are suffering from the use of non-standard
> encoding, unhinted, even non-professional-design font, non-standard
> keyboard, and many issues. all of these problems are quickly solved
> though.
> 
> meanwhile, the patialia funded project closes by end of may. i had
> hoped, and they hope, to have a professional font design workshop
> conducted well before that, and that leaves us with about 3 weeks.
-----------------------------------------------------
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