[Freebangfont-devel] [Fwd: [Indic-Computing] First National OpenType Font Workshop]

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <address@hidden>
To: Sunil Abraham <address@hidden>, Aman Grewal <address@hidden>, 
Manoj-ChennaiKavigall <address@hidden>, address@hidden, Hema A Murthy 
<address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden, ravi.desiraju 
<address@hidden>, Ravi Kant <address@hidden>
Subject: [Indic-Computing] First National OpenType Font Workshop
Date: 08 Feb 2003 13:17:47 +0530

Indic-Computing Consortium announces
------------------------------------------------

First National OpenType Font Workshop

Date: (probable dates) 28th to 30th March 2003
Venue: PESIT, Bangalore

Sponsors:

PESIT, Bangalore
Vishwa Kannada, Bangalore
DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore
Chattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society, Raipur
Indlinux.org, Mumbai
ekgaon technologies pvt. ltd, Madurai

Indic-Computing Consortium:

The Indic-Computing Consortium is an initiative of software developers,
businesses and academic institutions to help evolve appropriate
standards, resources and technologies for the Indic-Computing community.

The Indic-Computing Consortium is designed as a national-level
participatory organisation that serves as a common forum for discussion,
information exchange and advocacy on behalf of all parties interested in
the development of Indian Language Computing. The consortium aims to
make true access of computing possible for Indian people by enabling
support in local language.

A framework is being built for creation of a hierarchy of participatory
consortia, which would facilitate broad regional and local participation
in the standardization and development process from a variety of
stakeholders with differing areas of expertise and specialization. It is
aimed that these consortia be participatory and inclusive to properly
represent the viewpoint of local developers, users and other
stakeholders. In step two, Indic-Computing Consortium would encourage &
support formation of state-level consortia for each regional language,
which could include participants from the following key member groups:

- Developers: Software developers and managers developing local-language
tools
- Technologists: Academics and other experts in encoding and
representation issues
- Users / Practitioners: Government agencies, publishers, NGOs and other
major users of local-language software
- Linguistic Groups: Academics and other experts of the linguistic
features of a language and it's script

Working closely with the State Government, this state-level consortium
would serve as the representative body for deciding standards and other
technical decisions for computing in a given regional language. The
major roles to be carried out by the state-level consortium would be as
follows:

- Discuss various technical, linguistic and practical issues related to
computing in the regional language
- Serve as a capacity-building and educational resource for small
regional software developers and users
- Publish documents, tools & other materials helpful for local-language
computing and development
- Represent the regional language at National consortium meetings
- Represent the regional language at International Standardization
consortiums and proceedings such as Unicode and ISO

In September 2002 Indic-Computing organised its first National workshop,
which aimed at finding the various problems faced by the developer
communities and issues related to standardization, technical support,
policy and tools. To know more about the consortium, workshops and other
initiatives, visit us at
http://www.indic-computing.sourceforge.net

The workshop:

One of the working groups formed at the first Indic-Computing workshop
was for development of OTF & issues related to language standardization
and representation in international consortium. One of the action point
and agenda for the group was to “Hold OTF training workshop for
developing major Indian language OTF fonts”. Dr. U B Pavanaja took upon
to hold and coordinate this workshop and Mr. Abhas Abhinav proposed to
coordinate for logistics & sponsorship, Mr. G. Nagarjuna proposed to
help coordinate with Akruti for making available fonts to be used for
develop OTF. This group succeeded in its tasks making this workshop
possible, Akruti released some free fonts to be used for conversion to
OTF, which were taken up by some of the language groups (for more
details on the language groups and the major issues being dealt by it
please go through the proceedings of first workshop at our website)

Some of the major concerns raised by the language community were:

i. Developing good look fonts
ii. Development of open source tools for rendering and hinting of OTF
fonts (currently OTF development uses proprietary tools)
iii. Finding font developers for all Indian languages and coordinating
the group
iv. Making available fonts to be converted to OTF

This workshop seeks to address some of these issues and others enclosed
in the workshop program as under. This is the first national workshop on
the subject, we propose to take up more regional workshops in future to
give focused attention to each language, these workshops would be held
all across India in different parts and would hold training programs and
technology demonstration. We invite volunteers who would take upon to
hold these workshops and provide coordination & logistics support. The
Indic-Computing Consortium would provide necessary technical support and
capacity building to these regional groups.

Why OpenType?

OpenType is an extension to TrueType, and uses Unicode as standard for
character encoding. It also provides additional tables for defining rich
set of mappings between characters and glyphs. It also provides for a
having a large glyph set and even glyph variants. All the features
provided by OpenType format can be made use by having a application
independent, preferable system level library with a api interface usable
by applications.

For Indic script processing OpenType tables like GSUB (glyph
substitution) and GPOS (glyph positioning) gives font designer to define
his rules on what conjuncts or combinations could be made available.
Application programmer is relieved of the burden of knowing all the
linguistic part. Also OpenType sort of makes the concept of glyph
standard or font encoding standard redundant, again giving font vendors
freedom to follow their own glyph sets and not really affecting the
application. To summarize OpenType provides lot of benefits to Indic
computing and also renders redundant some issues faced in Indic computing.

There has been an ongoing debate on whether OTF is right for Indian
Languages. The debate is relevant and contextual also. One of the
perspectives penned by G Karunakar in support of OpenType is here for
participants to explore. However the debate goes on and we invite all to
participate in it on the Indic-computing mailing list. Please go through
the attachment why_otf.txt for more on OTF fonts.

Who can participate & pre-requisites:

• Any developer/company/organization having interest in language
technology and interested to learn development of OTF, understanding of
Unicode and related issues.
• Prerequisites
• Understand how to make a font
• Knowledge of Unicode
• Have a font that it/he/she can use for lab time
• A willingness to keep trying until it/he/she understands
• To get comprehensive information on pre-requisites mentioned above
please go through the following links

• Creating and supporting OpenType fonts for Indic scripts
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/indicot/default.htm

• Building OTF
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/intro.htm

• Details about VOLT
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/volt/default.htm

• Unicode FAQ about Indic
http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html

• Unicode code charts
http://www.unicode.org/charts/

How to participate:

i. The workshop is by registration only, last date of registration in
20th March 2003
ii. Participants interested to participate in the workshop should send
there applications to Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <address@hidden>
iii. Application format


• Name
• Organisation
• Communication Address
• Whether participating in individual capacity or representing your
organization
• In either case please write in 200 words your interests and what do
you expect from the workshop
• If there are more then one participant from your organization/group
please provide the numbers and communication address only.

iv. Please send the registration fee (*) (as applicable) by Demand Draft
in the name of “DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore”

• Students - 500.00
• Active contributors to Indic-Computing Mailing lists (#) - 750.00
• Members of GLUGS & open source developers - 1000.00
• Academic & Government Institutions - 1500.00
(Representatives other then students)
• Corporate & other commercial software developers - 2000.00

(*) Participants please note that fee would cover workshop registration,
literature, CD with important font development softwares, lodging and
boarding for three days (also dinner for the night before the workshop
starts).

v. After acceptance, application request (printed) & Registration fee
should be sent to the following address:

DeepRoot Linux Pvt. Ltd.
#377, SFS-407, IVth Phase 64,
Yelahanka New Town
Bangalore – 560 064
Karnataka, India
Ph No. +91 80 856 2896
email: address@hidden

vi. We have a very small support available for selected participants who
are not able to meet their travel & registration fee. All participants
who are not able to meet the expenses could apply for support from
Indic-Computing Consortium. Each application would be studied for
providing support. Typically we would support students, young developer
(not having financial support), members of GLUG’s and Volunteers;
corporate & other commercial software developers are discouraged to
apply for this support.
vii. Decisions on the applicable fee (#) & necessary support would be
taken by Indic-Computing Consortium and shall be notified to the applicant.

Contacts:

Participants are advised to contact the following for there queries:

Dr. U B Pavanaja: <address@hidden>

Technical clarification, sessions of the workshops, required
preparation, fonts etc

Mr. Abhas Abinav: <address@hidden>

Logistics, Lodging & Boarding, Venue, Registration fee etc

Mr. Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya: <address@hidden>

Workshop registration application, coordination, any other issue not
covered above

Instructions for Participants:

1) The participants are advised to go through the pre-requisites and
equip themselves with necessary knowledge on font & Unicode standard.
2) The staying arrangements are from the evening before the day of start
of the workshop. Dinner would be provided for the night also, for all
participants reaching before 9.00 PM only.
3) The lodging & boarding provided by PESIT is in hostels & mess, and is
modest by all means. Participants who wish to opt out of this
arrangement can make there own staying arrangements. Please notify the
same to us, also it is expected that the lunch would be taken by all the
participants irrespective of there place of stay at mess only as there
is not much time available in between the session.
4) The staying arrangement in the hostel is till 3rd day evening, it is
expected that the participants would vacate the rooms by evening.
5) PESIT is at outskirts of Bangalore, participants are expected to make
there own arrangements for local travel, as nothing could be provided by
the organizers.

Venue & how to reach:

PESIT (PES Institute of Technology)
100 Feet Ring Road,
Banashankri – IIIrd Stage, (Off. Mysore Road)
Bangalore
Phone: (080) 672 0007

For participants arriving at Airport, take a prepaid taxi to the above
address, the place is known to the prepaid stand.

Directions from Airport:

Airport Road--->Richmond Circle--->Lalbagh --->Hanumant
Nagar--->HoskarHalli--->PESIT 100 Feet Ring Road

For participants arriving at Railway station & Bus station, best is to
take a prepaid taxi to the above address, the place is known to the
prepaid stand. A Bus is also available

Directions from Railway Station:

Station--->Chamrajpate--->Ashram--->Hanumant
Nagar--->HoskarHalli--->PESIT 100 Feet Ring Road


Workshop program:

Day-1:

09:00 - 09:45 Registration
09:45 - 10:15 Welcome & Inauguration – J Koshy / Director PESIT
10:15 - 10:45 Overview - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Planning glyph repertoire - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to Indian scripts, Character set, tools &
Glyph Design & current trends in fonts- Ravi Pande
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 - 15:00 Testing glyphs, Generating Fonts, Font format - Ravi Pande
15:00 - 15:15 Tea break
15:15 - 17.15 Lab: Define glyphs and fill out repertoire
17.15 - Tea & informal interaction

Day-2:

09:30 - 10:15 Encoding - J Koshy
10:15 - 10:45 Introduction to OTF - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Open Type Tables - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to VOLT - Pavanaja
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 – 15.30 Lab: Open type tables

Day-3:

09:30 - 10:15 Testing - Pavanaja
10:15 - 10:45 Hinting – Video Presentation, from Microsoft training
programme
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Digitally signing the font - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Fonts on Linux - Karunakar
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 – 15.30 Lab: Open type tables

Special presentations proposed:

a. Sunil Abraham, Mahiti, Bangalore, would arrange for an IPR (cyber
laws) lawyer Lawrence Liang, who would discuss the issue of OTF openness
after understanding the Adobe & Microsoft agreement on release of the fonts.
b. Development of Otf from Ttf (Akruti) experiences: Nagarjuna
c. Open/free software tools for Otf development: M Arun

best wishes

vijay

-- 

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
ekgaon technologies
email: address@hidden
website: http://www.ekgaon.com





----


Why Opentype?

Background
----------------

Any language is written using a script. A script - writing system - is 
collection of graphical shapes/symbols evolved over time and usually represent 
a distinct sound/idea/thing. These basic shapes are also called 
letter/aplhabet/character. 'Character' is widely used one in computer 
terminology.  This graphical shape for characters in digital typography terms 
called a glyph. And Font is a collection of glyphs with similar style. Glyph 
data is either a bitmap of the shape or set of points drawing the outline of 
the glyph. 

The collection of characters for a script is called the characterset. To use 
the script on computers, which does all processing in bits&bytes, each 
character is assigned a numeric code (called  code point or character code ) 
giving us a character encoding. The codes are usually 7bit, 8bit or 16bit and 
usually decided upon by countries where language is used majorly and accepted 
by standard bodies like ISO, Unicode or BIS(indian). For some characters in 
Devanagari:  क ख ग घ अ आ इ ई 

Issues with TrueType
----------------------------

TrueType font stores font data in tables, one of which is the CMAP table 
(character to glyph mapping). For 8bit fonts this table is 8bit & therefore has 
a limit that it can only have maximum of 256 glyphs. Though of this 256 spaces 
only abt 190-200 is actually avialable for glyphs, as rest is occupied by 
control codes.

This is a problem wrt Indic scripts as they have apart from basic character set 
(around 60-100 unique characters - ie consonants, vowels, vowel matras, 
punctuation/marks etc), they have large no of consonant vowel combinations, 
conjuncts (2 or more consonants combining), usually in 200-1000 or more. eg For 
devanagari we have

35 consonants, 16 vowels so theoritically we would have
35*35 + 35*16 = 1225 + 560 = 1785

1785 glyphs cannot be put in a 8bit TTF font. This number can be reduced by 
studying roots of the script & making few compromises on conjuncts to be used. 
An obvious solution is break down the script elements in to glyph parts, which 
can be combined to give required shapes

One simplification that is evident is that glyphs for consonant-vowel 
combinations are not needed & can be done with just using a basic set of 
consonants and vowel matras ( so 35+16+16 = 77 ). Most consonant conjuncts are 
half forms, so by just having half form.

 i)  Large glyph set needs to be reduced to 190-200
 ii) A mapping function for converting characters to glyphs is needed.
     Here we will have 1-to-1, 1-to-many , many-to-1 mappings.
 iii) Appropriate rendering features to give proper positioning.

With a 8bit TTF after making few compromises in no of conjuncts, glyphset can 
be brought to 190-200 range. But now glyphs are not accessed by character 
codes, but glyph codes or font encoding - so-so glyph given so-so code , which 
can vary from font to font. But complexity increases in step ii.

Step (i) is domain of font designer, but (ii) & (iii) have to be done by 
application developer. He has to write a library or api interface to take care 
of (ii) & (iii). This library will be used where ever there is need for script 
processing & display. This library could be used universally in many 
applications, if the font encoding is fixed. So then many fonts would work with 
same library.
 But unfortunately the current situation is such that there is no standardized 
font encoding, with font vendors having different encodings & application 
developers adopding different approaches for script processing. 

Step (i) could be avoided by having a 16bit table for character to glyph 
mapping. Then there is scope of having a large glyph set. This is what a 
Unicode font gives. It provides basic range for script and a private area in 
which one can put his own stuff. But still there is no standard access 
mechanism, which could simplify (ii) & (iii). Script processing logic & 
language details have still to be known by application developer & so also much 
of font stuff is to be hard coded into the application or the library as said 
above.

Also if (i)-(iii) could be achieved in some way it doesnt relieve the burden of 
programmer of knowing language processing detail nor does it easy job of font 
designer or give him flexibilty to prove his creativity. Also there is an 
interdependence between font designer & programmer with Unicode fonts job of 
font designer can be made little easy but not enough to make him & programmer 
independent.

All this can be made easy if we have 
- Font access mechanism which is not dependent on font encoding but character 
encoding
- Can provide for large glyph set
- Some way to keep mapping information within the font.
- Script processing available as a library with simple api to access such fonts 
& do text rendering.

And this is all what OpenType format provides and more. OpenType is an 
extension to TrueType , and uses Unicode as standard for character encoding. It 
also provides additional tables for defining rich set of mappings between 
characters and glyphs. It also provides for a having a large glyph set and even 
glyph varaints. All the features provided by OpenType format can be made use by 
having a application independent, preferable system level library with a api 
interface usable by applications.

For Indic script processing OpenType tables like GSUB (glyph substitution) and 
GPOS (glyph positioning) gives font designer to define his rules on what 
conjuncts or combinations could be made available. Application programmer is 
relieved of the burden of knowing all the linguistic part. Also OpenType sort 
of makes the concept of glyph standard or font encoding standard redundant, 
again giving font vendors freedom to follow their own glyph setsand not really 
affecting the application. To summarize OpenType provides lot of benifits to 
Indic computing and also renders redundant some issues faced in Indic computing.

-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta [ http://www.peacefulaction.org/sayamindu/ ]

=========================================
Speak out on social and cultural issues
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        PeacefulAction.Org
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otf-workshop.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document