Microsoft's Malayalam Typeface

[John Hudson]

Re. Unicode and Malayalam, I can confirm that the current encoding has been subject to much debate and some revision over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, there is a lot of disagreement about the correct/better way to encode Malayalam. Si, Peter C can probably tell you more about the issues involved.

[Si_Daniels]

Thanks John, I guessed as much. Kindly Hashim sent us a couple of PDFs that show some of the design issues with the font. These seem to be independent of the encoding issues. I've passed these on to Ali and Peter for review.

[hashimpm]

Regarding Unicode encoding—to the best of my knowledge—the disagreement is regarding the conjunct formation. Whether there should be 150 or 900. Can't OpenType fonts use this choice differently in different fonts, so that the user has a choice between say Kartika (traditional script) and Kartika (reformed script)?

Also Simon, the tools that you have shown wrt Verdana are Mac-specific and may no longer be available. Is there is a modern day option to go the same way? Does FontLab + BitFonter on PC suffice or are there any proprietary software being used nowadays? I am keen to explore possibilities.

[Si_Daniels]

>Can’t OpenType fonts use this choice differently

I would assume if this were possible someone would have done it, however it seems unlikely.

>Is there is a modern day option

The proces (draw bitmaps, then draw outlines, and then hint the outlines to match the bitmaps) does not make any sense today for Windows and Mac OS fonts as these OS's don't rasterize bi-level any more. Not sure what tools you might use to repeat this as an accademic excercize, mabybe bitfonter, FontLab and VTT.

[hashimpm]

Hi Simon,

Any progress on Kartika design issues?

[Si_Daniels]

The wheels of progress move slowly, however the timing, with respect to our product cycle, could be worse.

[hashimpm]

Thanks Simon.

Can you meanwhile give us some insight into the process of design of your screen fonts other than Verdana: Georgia, Trebuchet and the new ones? Are there any sites or useful links?

[Si_Daniels]

That might be best served in a new thread - although i think using a search engine to scan typophile for the following keywords might provide some good results - ClearType Collection, ClearType Hinting, Calibri, Designing for ClearType etc.,

[hashimpm]

Thanks.