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

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Mayank Jha <mayank25080562 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for getting the idea wrong, So we need to develop some testing script
> for some platform, as fontQA is for FontLabs. But since FontLabs is not
> freely available there is no way to really test and know how to develop
> fontQA. So, I think we can start off with Font Forge, which also supports
> python scripting.

Would you like to strip away the vagueness indicated by the phrase
"some testing script for some platform"? I detest lazy writing when it
comes to writing a proposal.

> So i would be developing a testing script to assess quality of fonts in the
> Font Forge framework.
>
> The characteristics I metntioned here is specific to devanagri script, the
> general parameters like font weights and point sizes mentioned here
> http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/, are not mentioned as I naively assumed
> them to be considered, should I mention them too ?

If you assume them to be considered, I would have to assume that the
methods to test them will be created by default. Such assumptions
exponentially increase the chances of expectation mismatch ie. what
you think is required to be done and what I'd think is absolutely must
have.

It would be nice if you consider that danger when writing up the
proposal and submitting it into Melange.

> Referring to http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/ I could not find the features
> specific to indic scripts like devanagri, and it redirects to the microsoft
> page, for the same, so I kept referring to uniscribe.

Isn't that what I have been repeating since the beginning of the
conversation - that a study of the specifications and, comprehending
their implementation in case of Indic fonts is required.

> So to sum up, I think what the project aims is to create sets of python
> scripts in Font Forge to judge the quality of fonts.
> Am I still missing something ?

The project idea is deliberately vague when it comes to the selection
of the programming language stack. So, it does not "aim to create sets
of Python scripts in FontForge", that is your interpretation of the
idea and, it may well be a valid interpretation. One would need to see
detail of your proposal to be able to assess whether you've figured it
out.



--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>