Re: Emacs support for Indic scripts -- First National Indic-Font Workshop March 2003

[Kenichi Handa <handa@m17n.org>]

In article <87brzgeovv.fsf@gnu.org>, Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:
> I've recently joined a mailing list with lots of people from South
> Asia on it.  What is the general direction of Emacs support for these
> South Asian languages when it comes to fonts and and input methods?
> If I hear something interesting that might be of interest to Emacs, do
> I post it here?  Is there some other, specific Emacs (Mule?) mailing
> list?

We have the mailing list emacs-indian@m17n.org which is
specific to Indian scripts/languages.

To subscribe to the list, please send a mail to
emacs-indian-ctl@m17n.org with the following line in the
body.

      subscribe YOUR_NAME 

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
handa@m17n.org

> Alex.


>  To: bytesforall_readers@yahoogroups.com
>  From: Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <vijay@ekgaon.com>
>  Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 21:31:32 +0530
>  Subject: [bytesforall_readers] Action points First National Indic-Font Workshop March 2003
>  Reply-To: bytesforall_readers@yahoogroups.com

> Hi Bytesforall Readers,

> Recently First National Indic-Font workshop, was held in Bangalore on 
> Indic font issues. The actions points of the workshop are shared here 
> with the group. People/organisations who are interested to voluntarily 
> join Regional Language Groups being formed and contribute towards 
> development of Indic-Computing are welcome. Please see below various 
> groups as of now.

> regards

> vijay

> Action points First National Indic-Font Workshop March 2003
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------

> Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <vijay@ekgaon.com>

> First National Indic-Font workshop, organized by Indic-Computing 
> Consortium was held from 28th to 30th March 2003 at PES Institute of 
> Technology, Bangalore. The Indic-Computing Consortium is an initiative 
> of software developers, businesses and academic institutions to 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 Indic Language Computing.

> The workshop second in series was attended by 36 participants from 
> various languages & technology groups across India, Nepal & Bangladesh. 
> This workshop was an outcome of deliberation held in the first 
> Indic-Computing workshop held in September 2002 at Bangalore. One of the 
> working groups formed at the first Indic-Computing workshop was for 
> development of OTF (OpenType Fonts) & other font related issues, 
> encoding, language standardization and representation in international 
> consortium. One of the action point and agenda for the group was to 
> \x1cHold OTF training workshop for developing major Indic language OTF 
> fonts\x1d. <http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net>

> The idea was to get the community together for:

> 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 
> group for each language
> iv. Making available fonts to be converted to OTF

> The workshop addressed above issues and others as enclosed in the 
> workshop program (please see the website), through presentations, 
> discussions & Lab/training sessions over three days. This was the first 
> workshop on the subject, while it focused on OTF, it equally shared 
> concerns of open standards community and talks, demos and training 
> sessions of open source tools, as well as various alternative 
> technologies for Indic fonts were done by some of the participants. The 
> copyright/patent issue on OTF was also discussed, and concerns of 
> community were answered by Mr. Lawrence Liang, (Expert on Cyber Laws) 
> with a caution that the topic is debatable and much would be clear after 
> the pending case of Adobe in USA courts is decided.

> Summary of Three days:

> The three days of deliberations included:

> 1) Introduction to Indic scripts, Character set, tools & Glyph Design, 
> Testing glyphs, was given Ravi Pande, Font Designer, who dealt in depth 
> on design of glyphs and generating of fonts & on font formats.
> 2) Encoding & PfaEdit sessions were taken by Karunakar G, Project Leader 
> IndLinux.org, Pramod R of Mahiti & Asmita S. Khobragade of HBCSE. 
> Karunakar further elaborated on why OTF hold the answer to some of the 
> problems of developers as of now.
> 3) Dr. U B Pavanaja of Vishva Kannada Softech, discussed the OTF issues 
> and described the standards, Open Type Tables and VOLT. The use of VOLT 
> to develop OTF was demonstrated; during Lab participants used VOLT to 
> get a hands on experience of the tool.
> 4) Arun M of FSF, demonstrated localized Knoppix in Malayalam and also 
> discussed on the issues in Malayalam fonts and display of some special 
> characters.
> 5) Amar Gurung, Director, Nepali Font Standardization Project of Madan 
> Puraskar Pustakalaya [MPP], Kathmandu, Nepal, shared the problems in 
> standardizing Nepali Font the developments done this far. He shared a CD 
> on the project status and the work done (The CD content is now part of 
> workshop CD distributed to the participants)
> 6) Mustafa Jabbar, of Ananda Computers, Dhaka, Bangladesh shared his 
> work of 15 years in Bangla (Bengali) fonts. He claimed that a low cost 
> software application \x1cBijoy\x1d which his company has developed has covered 
> 95% of market in Bangladesh and is much famous in West Bengal, India 
> also. He has also designed the Bangla keyboard that is now a default 
> keyboard standard for Bangla.
> 7) Karunakar took sessions on TTX & talked about issues in fonts on 
> Linux while Dr. Pavanaja showed digital signing of fonts. Aditya Gokhale 
> of CDAC, took session on hinting of fonts.
> 8) Nagarjuna G of HBCSE, shared his experience of converting TTF fonts 
> offered by Akruti to OTF and shared his experiments in using available 
> open source tools to achieve good results.
> 9) IPR (cyber laws) lawyer Lawrence Liang of Alternate Law Forum, 
> discussed the crucial and much debated issue of OTF openness 
> (copyright/Patent) after understanding the Adobe & Microsoft agreement 
> on release of the fonts. While answering concerns of community Lawrence 
> cautioned that the topic is debatable and much would be clear after the 
> pending case of Adobe in USA courts is decided.

> Conclusion:

> At the end of the workshop its was proposed to take up the issues that 
> have emerged at more depth through regional consultations on each 
> language so that focused attention is their and local & regional groups 
> also get chance to participate and discuss there issues. We propose to 
> take up these Regional Language Workshops in future across different 
> parts of India, Nepal & Bangladesh and other regions with languages of 
> Indic origin. These workshops would be coordinated by regional language 
> groups (see proposed group) and would include training programs and 
> technology demonstration sessions besides getting the language community 
> together.

> Regional Language Working Groups:

> It was proposed to take up the initiative for having these regional 
> workshops through voluntary and community efforts. An individual 
> commitment on part of participants was requested to involve there energy 
> in development of these regional groups and also to discuss with these 
> respective organization to release atleast two fonts in each language in 
> open domain. Many participants gave the commitment to take the 
> initiative and also to get their organization involved in the 
> initiative. The following Regional Working Groups are proposed (to be 
> confirmed), these groups would take initiative and involve other 
> regional partners and build common understanding of major issues to be 
> discussed in the Regional Workshops. A framework for proposed Regional 
> Workshop would be circulated soon for feedback and action by these 
> groups. We invite volunteers who would take upon to hold these workshops 
> and provide coordination & logistics support and sponsors to contribute 
> to development of regional languages. The Indic-Computing Consortium 
> would provide necessary technical support and capacity building to these 
> regional groups.


> Hindi

> Ravi Kant, Sarai, New Delhi, <ravikant@sarai.net>
> Maryivan, Sarai, New Delhi <mary@sarai.net>
> Niyam Bhusan, New Delhi <linuxlingam@bhairon.com>
> Alok Kumar, Infosys, Bangalore, Karnataka <alkuma@yahoo.com>
> S K Anand, Akruti (Cyberscape Multimedia), <info@cyberscapeindia.com>
> Osama Mazar, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <osama@4cplus.com>
> Sanjay Gupta, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <sanjaya@4cplus.com>

> Kannada

> Dr. U B Pavanaja, Vishva Kannada Softech, Bangalore 
> <pavanaja@vishvakannada.com>
> PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Karnataka
> Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore
> C.V. Srinatha Sastry, KGP, Bangalore, <sastry@ead.cmmacs.ernet.in>
> Arun Sharma <arun@sharma-home.net>
> Bhupesh Koli, BharateeyaOO.o Team, NCST (National Centre for Software 
> Technology), Bangalore, <bhupesh@ncb.ernet.in>
> Shikha G Pillai, BharateeyaOO.o Team, NCST (National Centre for Software 
> Technology), Bangalore, <shikha@ncb.ernet.in>
> Abhas Abhinav, DeepRoot Linux, Bangalore, <abhas@deeproot.co.in>
> Sunil Abraham, Mahiti, Bangalore, <sunil@mahiti.org>
> Pramod R, Mahiti, Bangalore, <pramod@mahiti.org>

> Punjabi

> Niyam Bhusan, New Delhi <linuxlingam@bhairon.com>
> Janmeja Johl, Ludhiana, Punjab <janmeja@email.com>
> Osama Mazar, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <osama@4cplus.com>
> Sanjay Gupta, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <sanjaya@4cplus.com>

> Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri & Persian

> Pritam Nahar, Reality Information Systems, Pune, Maharastra 
> <pritam@realityinfo.com>
> Dr. Tarique Sani <from Nagpur>??
> Pakistan \x13 LUG, GLUG ??
> Mahesh Kulkarni, CDAC, Pune, Maharastra <mdk@cdacindia.com>
> Aditya Gokhale, CDAC, Pune, Maharastra <aditya@cdac.ernet.in>
> Santosh R, CDAC, Pune, Maharastra
> Ravi Nankarji, CDAC, Pune, Maharastra

> Bengali/Bangala, Assamese & Manipuri

> Mustafa Jabbar, Ananda Computers, Dhaka, Bangladesh <ananda@bdlink.com>
> Sayamindu Dasgupta, LUG, Kolkatta, <unmadindu@Softhome.net>
> Zaheed Hossain, Ananda Computers, Kolkatta,
> Ravi Kant, Sarai, New Delhi, <ravikant@sarai.net>
> Bangladesh group of Tani Ahmed, ??

> Marathi & Konkani

> Nagarjuna G, Homi Bhaba Center for Science & Education, Mumbai 
> <nagarjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in>
> Sunil J. Shetty, Modular Infotech, Pune, <shreelinux@modular-infotech.com>
> Mohan Jadav, Modular Infotech, Pune, <modular@modular-infotech.com>
> Prakash Advani, Netcore, Mumbai, <prakash@netcore.co.in>
> G. Karunakar, Netcore, Mumbai, <karunakar@netcore.co.in>
> Ravi Pande, Pune, <panravi@yahoo.com>
> Asmita S. Khobragade, Homi Bhaba Center for Science & Education, Mumbai 
> <asmita_khobragade@yahoo.com>
> Frederick Noronha, Bytesforall, Goa <fred@bytesforall.org>
> Kanti Jadia, Micropro Software Solutions, Pune <kjadia@microproindia.com>

> Tamil

> K. Viveka Nathan, TeNet, IIT Madras, Chennai <vivek@lantana.tenet.res.in>
> R. Murugapandian, Sudharsanam Centre for Arts & Culture, Pudukkottai, 
> Tamil Nadu <barathee@sancharnet.in>
> Manoj R Annadurai, Chennai Kavigal, <manoj@chennaikavigal.com>
> Dr. V. Venkataramanan, <http://www.tamillinux.org> ??
> International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil, 
> http://www.infitt.org/

> Telugu

> Kiran Chandra, Jana Vignana Vedika, (Prajashakti Daily), Hyderabad, 
> <kiranchandra@prajashakti.com>
> Atul Negi, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad <atulcs@uohyd.ernet.in>
> Rajasekharan, NISC India, Hyderabad, <raj@nisc.co.in>

> Gujarati

> R. K. Dave, G.A.D, Government of Gujarat, Gandhi Nagar, 
> <rkdave23@hotmail.com>
> Bhavin Choksi, CRAnTI Technologies, Ahmedabad <bhc101@yahoo.com>
> Ramesh Patel, SRISTI, Ahmedabad <ramesh@sristi.org>

> Malayalam

> Rajkumar S, FSF, Trivendram, <s_raj@myrealbox.com> <raj@linuxense.com>
> Arun M, FSF, Trivendram, <arun@freedevelopers.net>
> Osama Mazar, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <osama@4cplus.com>
> Sanjay Gupta, 4Cplus, New Delhi, <sanjaya@4cplus.com>

> Nepali

> Amar Gurung, Nepali Font Standardization Project, Madan Puraskar 
> Pustakalaya [MPP], Kathmandu, Nepal, <amar.gurung@info.com.np>
> Pawan Chitrakar, Kathmandu, Nepal, <pc@info.com.np>

> Oriya

> Sashikant, NIIT, Sambhalpur, Orissa, <sashimails2u@yahoo.com>

> Sanskrit


> Alok Kumar, Infosys, Bangalore, Karnataka <alkuma@yahoo.com>



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