On Feb 19, 9:55*am, Ashok Kothare
wrote:
Both Vikrant and grammatin have missed the issue. As for vikrant I must say
thanks for atleast admiring my effort to help writing Indian languages with
english keyboard. Grammatin may not be knowing that unicode for devnagari are
still not standardised.
If Devanagari is in Unicode (and it is), then by definition it is
standardized. I happen to have the Sanskrit and Hindi IMEs activated
on my computer at the moment and I have no trouble typing Sanskrit and
Hindi, on my ordinary 107-key keyboard.
Even if tommorrow they are standardised using them
may need a separate multikeyed (126 keys) keyboard. It is a big work to do
all that and so at present using english unicode and english keyboard to
write Indian languages is by far the best option. Grammatin says he used many
fonts and mastering their each key notations was not easy. I agree to his
point and that is because all the fonts he has tried are with special drivers
to get large number of characters on english key board.
No; as I said, I was using a Mac, before Unicode, and there were no
"font drivers" in a Mac: there were only sets of 223 glyphs (255 less
32) assigned to the 223 available slots in an ordinary font. It was in
fact impossible to make all Indian fonts interconvertible, because
compound aksharas are formed differently in the different scripts, but
it was possible to type every one of the ten standard Indic scripts
(Devanagari, Bangla, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu,
Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala) using the standard Mac keyboard, which is
almost identical in layout and inventory to the standard PC keyboard.
Speciality of my
fonts is that I have developed keyboard set up and that is copyrighted. Fonts
made with that keyboard set up makes it possible to write almost all marathi,
hindi, sindhi, konkani and also bhojpuri and such modern indian languages but
for sanskrit only up to 95% can be writen. And that is not a big problem
since, my expectation is that these fonts are used for modern languages and
not sanskrit. By one estimate user of modern languages are 99.999% and user
of sanskrit are the rest 0.001%, this may explain my point.
Then, I'm sorry to say, your product is not adequate -- the Mac fonts
and keyboard software created by Ecological Linguistics in the 1980s
and 1990s could handle _all_ the needs of all the languages, classical
and modern.
If my suggestion is accepted a large number of users will benefit immensly
since thay will get fonts in the price of the window and no extra cost. This
shall make using computers all the more economical. Presently fonts of
private makers are costing a price and they each have their special problems,
not to mention of.
I hope this satisfies friends.
The fonts and IMEs (what you may be referring to as "font drivers")
_are_ included in the price of Windows (XP and Vista; I can't say how
many years ago they were introduced). (All you need to do is go to the
Control Panel called Regional and Language Options and install them.
You will probably be asked to insert your Windows CD.) For most of the
Indic scripts, only one font is included -- Tahoma -- and it is not
particularly attractive. Thus if you, Ashok, have created good-looking
fonts for Devanagari (and the other nine scripts), then you will sell
many more copies if they are Unicode- and Windows-compatible than if
they simply sit on top of the Latin-1 Unicode encoding (and no one
will be able to share files with anyone who has not purchased your
fonts, at, as you say, extra cost).
"Ashok Kothare" wrote:
I have developed Indian Language fonts to be used on english key board. I
have been giving them to all those who want to use them on windows to write
in Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, Sindhi, Bhojpuri and
more free of cost. My suggestion to microsoft is that they should accept
these fonts as default fonts on their windows version of today and tomorrow.
This will definitely improve use of windows in Indian Homes. Mcrosoft is
already havig some versions of fonts to write in these languages but they
need a special driver to be installed additionally. With my fonts which are
based on default keyboard driver can work like english fonts on all microsoft
programmes and also on other window based programmes. I am doing it to
promote use of computers in Indian homes since, english is still not the
language of Indian homes. My idea is, if microsoft accepts this suggestion
many more users shall benefit by this facility. Presently, I can reach only a
fraction of user through my resource. I want all concerned to vote for my
suggestion for the benefit of all. I shall give my fonts to those interested
in trying them if they ask for them on my email IDs ,
,
Hope to get your full support for this worthy cause. Thanks,
Ashok Kothare.
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