Sanskrit fonts

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna,

 

I Think that Ramakanta Prabhu and others have done a wonderful job with the

Sanskrit fonts and associated tools. However, due to a lack of

standardisation with international standards bodies, the onward march of

information technology and various intellectual property issues, we are

currently in a mess. This is a serious problem, because apart from making

it difficult to create and distribute new material containing these fonts,

it also impacts the future readability of documents created with them.

 

Personally I have had endless hours of amusement (not!) with the

ksyberspace.com fonts download pages, and the Arcana Journal web.

 

I recently attended an Adobe seminar where a new font format was described

(used in inDesign) - Open type

 

more details at

http://www.adobe.com/type/opentype/main.html

 

.... it is based on Unicode (=thousands of standards-defined characters) ...

mentions PC/Mac cross-compatibility, but nothing about UNIX/Linux support

 

It would seem that we need to invest in a new family of fonts with the

following features:

 

* Either freeware or © ISKCON, with no IP issues

* Cross-platform, at least Windoze/Mac, and usable in all common applications

 

What format(s) these fonts should take, I don't know as I am not conversant

with fontology, only use. One thing is for sure though, the present

situation is a mess, and causing lots of problems for devotees engaged in

publishing.

 

This is something the BBT needs to make a priority, and should not be left

to volunteers in their spare time.

 

ys

Arjunanatha dasa

 

 

 

 

At 08:13 10/12/2002 -0500, Sahadeva (das) (Miami, FL - USA) wrote:

>Hare Krsna,

>

>I'm using a G4 powerbook and have noticed that MS Word also has trouble

>displaying all the sanscrit fonts, whereas Text Pad has no trouble at all. I

>would also be appreciative to anyone who comes up with a solution. I think

>that in the vedabase version for the Mac there is a special font for Apple.

>Anyone know if that is true?

>

>saha

 

Webservant, ISKCON UK

www.iskcon.org.uk

 

Chant

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

 

....and be happy!

[Guest guest]

Dear Arjunanatha Prabhu,

 

Please accept my best wishes. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

Thank you for your informative text about the aging technology of the

BBT's present fonts. and the need to move ahead.

 

Adobe's page on "OpenType" is a useful read.

 

> This is something the BBT needs to make a priority, and should not

> be left to volunteers in their spare time.

 

Perhaps this is so. But these days the BBT is not well endowed with

in-house resources for this sort of project.

 

If you or anyone else concerned could suggest a specific path to

take--and, especially, if you can identify any devotees with the

skills and interest to help--that would be most welcome.

 

Meanwhile, I'll suggest to the other BBT directors that we make this a

topic for our next annual meeting, this coming June.

 

Thank you again. Hare Krsna.

 

Hoping this finds you in good health,

 

Yours in Srila Prabhupada's service,

Jayadvaita Swami

[Guest guest]

Dear Jayadvaita Svami:

PAMHO AGTSP

 

Already I was made some investigations about font technology and my last

experimental goal was the improvement of diacritical and samskrit

(devanagari) fonts online (For WEB Pages) without the need to have installed

ttf or pfm, afm or opentype files in your pc. You can see it working at:

http://www.iskcon.com.mx/chants.htm and navigate between the songs.

 

The only one you need is say "yes" to the autoinstallation of a plugin the

firs time you load the page.

 

Here is only diacritical fonts shown, but this work with devanagari

characters also, really works with any postscript font.

 

This technology uses the metric information from the pfm (postcript font

metrics) font files. The plugin render the font on the fly.

 

Open type is based in pfm technology, is the next generation, but with the

same principles than postcript. I think open type fonts can work for the net

in the same way.

 

Hopping this can help you.

 

ys

Narendra dasa

 

 

> Dear Arjunanatha Prabhu,

>

> Please accept my best wishes. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

>

> Thank you for your informative text about the aging technology of the

> BBT's present fonts. and the need to move ahead.

>

> Adobe's page on "OpenType" is a useful read.

>

> > This is something the BBT needs to make a priority, and should not

> > be left to volunteers in their spare time.

>

> Perhaps this is so. But these days the BBT is not well endowed with

> in-house resources for this sort of project.

>

> If you or anyone else concerned could suggest a specific path to

> take--and, especially, if you can identify any devotees with the

> skills and interest to help--that would be most welcome.

>

> Meanwhile, I'll suggest to the other BBT directors that we make this a

> topic for our next annual meeting, this coming June.

>

> Thank you again. Hare Krsna.

>

> Hoping this finds you in good health,

>

> Yours in Srila Prabhupada's service,

> Jayadvaita Swami

>

[Guest guest]

> You can see it working at:

> http://www.iskcon.com.mx/chants.htm and navigate between the songs.

 

Yes, it works well. In my primary browser, Opera, it doesn't work. But

it does with Internet Explorer.

 

Hare Krsna.

[Guest guest]

Dear Jayadvaita Svami:

PAMHO AGTSP

 

Yes, actually I have the key (I think and hope) to made it cross plattform

and cross browser, but I wasn't enought time to test it. I hope in some

months can show it working.

 

ys

Narendra dasa

 

> > You can see it working at:

> > http://www.iskcon.com.mx/chants.htm and navigate between the songs.

>

> Yes, it works well. In my primary browser, Opera, it doesn't work. But

> it does with Internet Explorer.

[Guest guest]

See Adobe's Opentype page:

http://www.adobe.com/type/opentype/main.html

 

The Adobloke from my InDesign seminar sa everything is going from

Postscript level 2 to Postscript level 3 nowadays, but InDesign can output

either, also PDF, from any font types, including OpenType.

 

To be honest, I think that considering a font format changeover for the

BBT, with all its equipment, including developing new fonts and converting

archive material, is a project which would possibly be best scoped by a

specialist documentation consultancy and Adobe reseller like Mekon

(www.mekon.co.uk). Devotees could probably do the job very well, but a

consultant would give a good idea of how much work might be involved, the

costs and benefits. It might also be worth using such a company for some

pump-primimg training of key BBT personnel in appropriate new skills.

 

Reissuing the vedabase converted for Opentype fonts, and with other

enhancements, online compulsory registration and a much lower price might

also enable it to be distributed on the street as part of normal sankirtana

and pay for the conversion.

 

Ys

Arjunanatha dasa

 

 

 

At 14:34 31/12/2002 +0100, BMD wrote:

> > Meanwhile, I'll suggest to the other BBT directors that we make this a

> > topic for our next annual meeting, this coming June.

>

>I have put the topic on the agenda.

>

>

>About two years ago I wanted to change all our production here in Sweden

>to OpenType fonts because it obviously is a far superior format.

>

>But I cancelled this project when I was informed that a switch to

>OpenType would mean we'd have to scrap all our PostScript equipment

>(laser printers, color proofers, imagesetter) because PostScript

>equipment was simply not able to handle OpenType. I was informed that

>this was the one and only reason why the industry had not adopted

>OpenType and would not adopt it for a long time to come.

>

>Did Adobe in the meantime change the format?

>

>Can OpenType now be output on standard PostScript equipment?

>

>Or is Arjunanatha Prabhu talking about the web exclusively?

>

>ysbmd

[Guest guest]

> The Adobloke from my InDesign seminar sa everything is going from

> Postscript level 2 to Postscript level 3 nowadays, but InDesign can output

> either, also PDF, from any font types, including OpenType.

>

> To be honest, I think that considering a font format changeover for the

> BBT, with all its equipment, including developing new fonts and converting

> archive material, is a project which would possibly be best scoped by a

> specialist documentation consultancy and Adobe reseller like Mekon

> (www.mekon.co.uk). Devotees could probably do the job very well, but a

> consultant would give a good idea of how much work might be involved, the

> costs and benefits. It might also be worth using such a company for some

> pump-primimg training of key BBT personnel in appropriate new skills.

>

> Reissuing the vedabase converted for Opentype fonts, and with other

> enhancements, online compulsory registration and a much lower price might

> also enable it to be distributed on the street as part of normal sankirtana

> and pay for the conversion.

 

I don't want to sound too conservative but considering the prersonnel we have

at the moment and our capacity it is not the right time to change to other type

of fonts, to change the equipment and all the consecutive things involved. We

also have to consider the printers we are dealing with, whether this cahnge

would create problems for them too.

 

ys kld