[Tugindia] marathi fonts, and TOAST

[Ajit Ranade]

On 11 Oct 2002, Radhakrishnan CV wrote:

>     >>  Have you developed any fonts?  Or do you have any specific
>     >> plans to do one?
> 
>     manjusha> We are searching for exact requirement.
> 
> I guess, you're a native Marathi speaker?  Why not you try to
> accomplish the following:
> 
> 1. a free Marathi MetaFont font in different sizes, shapes and
>    weights.


radhakrishnan, 

as you know, marathi uses devnagari script. the devnag package already
supports typesetting marathi, as also sanskrit and hindi. and the fonts
that come along with devnag package, are quite excellent.


> 2. a pre processor to use this fonts in normal TeX/LaTeX

the devnag package comes with a preprocessor.


> 3. a mapping scheme to input Marathi using Roman keyboard

again, the velthuis scheme (of devnag) supports this. you just type {\dn
ajit} to get my name typeset in devnagari in the velthuis scheme.


> 4. Omega Translation Process (OTP) to integrate the fonts into Omega
>    system which will facilitate multilingual typesetting, also it does
>    away with the pre-processor

this would be great. 


> 5. a decent documentation for the user

there's always room for more and better documentation. 

in fact unlike the linux world, i don't find the tex world developing
HOWTO or mini-HOWTO files. i think this would be a worthwhile project for
tugindia members.  another great initiative has begun from India, called
LOST i.e. linux-one-stanza-tip. this a collection of simple linux tips in
one stanza. (now only if a.r. rehman sets these tips to music, we are all
set!)


cheers,

ajit.

ps: 

how about TOAST (tex-one-and-half-stanza-tip)?

TOAST 1: How to get an underline, which is better than what one gets by
using tex's command, i.e. which is closer to the baseline of a sentence,
and not under the "stick-out" letters like "y", "g" etc?

use:

\def\undertext#1{$\underline{\smash{\vphantom{y}\raise2pt\hbox{#1}}}$}