[Project-ideas] GSoC idea for improving the aesthetic quality of Indian Scripts

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 3:52 AM, Mayank Jha <mayank25080562 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well as I am thoroughly aware of the devnagri script, I could make one
> quality evaluator tool which could judge the quality of fonts based on the
> rules and conventions mentioned here,
> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/devanagari/intro.htm also I
> think the user must have the option to add his own standards and then judge
> the fonts based on his customized standards!

Since you mention that you are aware of the Devnagri script I will
assume that it would be trivial for you to familiarize yourself with
the limitations of the currently available OpenType fonts in wide
usage. I'd recommend that you pick any existing font and attempt to
assess the shortcomings.

Self-imposed guides are not really "standards". So, at this point we
are looking at ensuring that the data points for assessment are
extensible/pluggable rather than being able to handle multiple
customizations.

Additionally, please put some thought to the difference between a
screen-ready font and a print-ready font. The aesthetics and
requirements tend to diverge in places.

> My personal experience with devangri script says the following:

At this point I'd ask for a bit of description. On which OS is this
personal experience felt? What input method do you use and, what fonts
are you using?

> ->position of halant is really a matter of concern and also its positioning
> must be predefined .
> ->biggest issue which I still face while writing anything in hindi which
> uses devnagri script is when two
> consonants are conjoined, then how much portion of what is to retained and
> how is the conjoinment to be done!
> ->Position of anuswar or chandrabindu
> ->Application of matras to the consonants.
> ->where should the base line be there and where not, for e.g letters like
> kshatriya wala khsa does not require a base line over its head. There are
> many more though!

Have you been using a reasonably recent distribution of Linux? The
points that you mention above are not available as OPEN issues - if
you still continue to see them you should file bugs.

> Well keeping in mind the above points, and the best suggestions acceptable
> to majority of the users of the script
> We can pool in the scores given to some feature using online voting and then
> we could use it in our font!

Users of a script are not language experts. And, neither do most users
have enough linguistic knowledge to decide on the validity of a font.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves at this point - tinkering with
existing tools to figure out how they can provide data from a font is
a step that is required to be undertaken.

> I think reading from another thread, you said that it would be better if we
> could make our own font quality tester. I too am in favour of that!For that
> I think one needs to be familiar with the Open Type Specification and also
> peeking into the present testers may give some hint!

I have said that FontQA is an existing tool that does similar testing.
An assessment needs to be done to check if FontQA can be extended with
rule-sets. Or, if it is easier to have a new tool that addresses this
problem space.

/sankarshan

ps: Please keep conversations to the mailing list. We use the archives
heavily to do cross reference.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>