[Indic-dev] Progress of dev... -- Malayalam-TeX

[S. venkataraman]

Hi,
Are you using unicode font in conjunction with omega(Should I say 
	Lambda?). -----Original Message-----
	From:	Alex A.J. [SMTP:alexaj@myrealbox.com]
	Sent:	Friday, December 06, 2002 11:32 PM
	To:	Indic Dev
	Subject:	Re: [Indic-dev] Progress of dev... --
Malayalam-TeX


	----- Original Message ----- 
	From: H S Rai <hsraidce@iitr.ernet.in>

	> What is the progress of  various development projects on which
various
	> members are working?
	> 

	Ah well, I'm slowly recovering from a severe case of
	metafont-addiction. TeX was demanding just too much from
	me so I took a break from all development work for 3 weeks.

	Malayalam-TeX is almost ready for distribution. The only thing
	remaining is the technical documentation. I am trying hard
	to release it before Christmas.

	Now Malayalam-TeX has matured enough for professional
	typesetting. All LaTeX commands are working fine.
	Only a few things need to be fine-tuned. Also it has got an
	excellent font containing 600+ glyphs (spread across 6 pfb
files)
	incorporating the entire traditional Malayalam script.

	> We don't get  any good requirement from  users of TeX to  add
in "wish
	> list", so I guess  our wish list is empty at  the moment.


> Wish list will materialize only if a basic package is available for
> a particular language and people start experimenting. Currently, such
> packages exist only for a few indic scripts. It will be helpful
> if we have a list of the available packages (with details like
> do they have a preprocessor, what transcription scheme is used etc.).
> I've heard that there are packages for Telugu and Kannada,
> and seen a beautiful Tamil metafont as well. Does anybody
> on the list use them?
	 I think Itrans is a very good package.  Its hallmark is
flexibility.
	Its preprocessor is not tied to any language.  For each font one

	wants to use, one has to write a IFM file.  If there is no
mathematics,
	it can also produced postscript file directly without texing.
It can 
	also produce html.  It comes with font called xdvng for this
purpose 
	for devanagari.
	This already
	supports Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and Marathi and
	 some other packages.
	[S. venkataraman]  
	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Alex A.J. [SMTP:alexaj@myrealbox.com]
	Sent:	Friday, December 06, 2002 11:32 PM
	To:	Indic Dev
	Subject:	Re: [Indic-dev] Progress of dev... --
Malayalam-TeX


	----- Original Message ----- 
	From: H S Rai <hsraidce@iitr.ernet.in>

	> What is the progress of  various development projects on which
various
	> members are working?
	> 

	Ah well, I'm slowly recovering from a severe case of
	metafont-addiction. TeX was demanding just too much from
	me so I took a break from all development work for 3 weeks.

	Malayalam-TeX is almost ready for distribution. The only thing
	remaining is the technical documentation. I am trying hard
	to release it before Christmas.

	Now Malayalam-TeX has matured enough for professional
	typesetting. All LaTeX commands are working fine.
	Only a few things need to be fine-tuned. Also it has got an
	excellent font containing 600+ glyphs (spread across 6 pfb
files)
	incorporating the entire traditional Malayalam script.

	> We don't get  any good requirement from  users of TeX to  add
in "wish
	> list", so I guess  our wish list is empty at  the moment.
> I think devnag is the most used one so u guys have to start the
> wish list. It would be nice if you post some example docs.
Unfortunately I can't find a free 
true type/ps font that is available in all weights, m, n, b etc.  This
applies to 
Devanagari also.  This is really a problem.  Even in the fonts
distributed under the 
GPL in Indian FSF site, not all the weights are available. Still, with
the available fonts
one can implement a package for devnagari.  Velthuis' package does not
have fonts 
in different shapes and weights, but the fonts distributed at the FSF
has more weights.
Given the non-standard nature of inscription, this is a non-trivial
task. Amitabh, hopefully,
with you experience in using devnagari fonts,  we can take this up in
the Delhi TUG.
Since everybody seems busy and a meeting looks impossible,
 we can spend some time looking around, read some background
material, etc.  
>  > Do we have a list of various ongoing projects with developer's
> name?
> > 
> 
> This is most necessary.
> 
> Regards.
> Alex.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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