[XeTeX] Devanagari in FreeSerif

Steve White stevan.white at googlemail.com
Fri Jan 6 21:40:10 CET 2012


Hi Zdenek,

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 6:57 PM, Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/1/6 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>> 2012/1/6 Steve White <stevan.white at googlemail.com>:
>>>
>> I did not know that FreeSans and FreeSerif contain contain Devanagari.
>> The fonts were installed with my Linux distribution thus I will try to
>> make some tests.
>>
>
> FreeSans looks weli in my computer but FreeSerif is totally broken,
> probably all the GPOS tables for Devanagari are missing. However, my
> Linux is very old, I will try to find a new version of the fonts
>
I see it now.

Please submit a bug report, explaining Devanagari in Serif has
inadequate look-ups, and compare it to FreeSans.
(They would be GSUB tables, by the way.)

It's amazing I missed this so long, but I don't have many tests for Devanagari/
There is a single lookup in Serif for that script with a single
ligature.  I remember wondering about that single glyph, but it had a
funny name, and maybe I never researched it.
I don't see any other glyphs for ligatures for the range.  It looks bad.

It may be the lookups were inserted but somehow deleted.  I'll check.
Otherwise, I may have to delete the Devanagari range from FreeSerif.

The story is: almost a decade ago, there was a period of enthusiastic
addition to FreeFont, unfortunately with limited guidelines.  Several
non-functional ranges were included.  We have since cleaned up most of
these problems, but clearly some remain.

The only other possibility is that I find the source for this range,
and it includes the  ligated glyphs already.  Then it is just a matter
of a *couple of weeks* of work.  Otherwise I'll be forced to delete
the range in Serif.

> Before reporting I would like to ask one question. In all Devanagari
> fonts I have ever seen the long independent A (U+0906) looks
> graphicaly as if short independent A (U+0905) was followed by long A
> matra (U+093E). In FrreSerif and FreeSans the vertical stems in the
> long independent A are too close to each other. When looking to the
> text it is not well readable. Is this just my feeling or should I
> report it as a bug?
>
Please report that as a separate bug.

If you could provide me an image of text you judge to be better, with
the same text encoded in Unicode, that would be great!
I can easily fix such an individual problem if the range is otherwise working.

Thanks hugely!

>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 5:59 AM, bhutex <bhutex at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Following Unicode free fonts are available for Hindi/Devnagari :
>>>>
>>>> Akshar Unicode - not beautiful
>>>> Chandas - Full font, not only devnagari but all characters needed for
>>>> typesetting vedas etc.
>>>> Uttara - Probably a variant of Chandas
>>>> Nakula and Sahedava - Twin fonts
>>>> FreeSans - it has Devnagari but not fully working for example फ्र etc. are
>>>> not coming properly
>>>> Osha -
>>>> Guruma -
>>>> Siddhanta - It has variants like Siddhanta 1, Siddhanta 2, Chakravat,
>>>> Chakravat 2
>>>> Calcutta , Calcutta1, Calcutta 2, Vyakaran and Nepali
>>>> Sanskrit2003
>>>> AA-NagariShri
>>>>
>>>> In addition some fonts are available on the Govt. of India's Ministry of
>>>> Information Technology website (around 50 fonts (including Bold, Italic,
>>>> Bold Italic)) fromC-DAC etc. organizations. But these fonts also have some
>>>> problem Just like FreeSans.
>>>>
>>>> The fonts mentioned above (for dictionary type work) are sufficient. C-DAC
>>>> fonts are mostly decorative fonts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Happy TeXing
>>>> The BHU TeX Group
>>>> क्या आप यह देख पा रहें हैं।
>>>> इस का मतलब आप का कम्प्यूटर यूनीकोड
>>>> को समझती है। देर किस बात की हिन्दी मे
>>>> चिठ्ठियां लिखिये।
>>>>
>
>
> --
> Zdeněk Wagner
> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex



More information about the XeTeX mailing list