Re: Which Non-Latin Scripts Do Free Software Fonts Not Cover?

["Dave Crossland" <dave lab6 com>]

Hi Nicolas!

On 17/10/2007, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas mailhot laposte net> wrote:
> Le mardi 16 octobre 2007 à 23:59 +0100, Dave Crossland a écrit :
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I've just started the Masters degree in Typeface Design at the
> > University of Reading (for which Gentium was a submitted project) and
> > we're expected to do a non-latin script complement to our font, and
> > I'd thought I'd ask around if anyone here has any opinions about the
> > following:
> >
> > Are there non-latin scripts that free software fonts do not cover at
> > all at the moment?
>
> DejaVu tracks user requests in its bugzilla and in the sfd fonts
> themselves so I don't think finding glyphs to work on would be hard.

Thanks for this tip, I'll do this and look into DejaVu itself for ideas :-)

> Also DejaVu has a friendly & responsive team that can coach new type
> designers. Unless you have the time and energy to bear the burden of a
> major font project alone, I wouldn't advise contributing to a font
> project that is not already organised to accept contributions from
> external designers.

I've just started the MA Typeface Design programme at the University
of Reading, so I'll be getting a lot of coaching from proprietary
designers, and will be committing a year of time and energy into a
major font project alone, since its a difficult question of how to
assess student work that is public-collaborative. Maybe some clever
svn and fontdiff tools could sort that out, but I'm not a programmer
(yet..)

> > Which non-latin script communities are adopting free software and
> > would benefit from more fonts?
>
> A common request is japanese in DejaVu. But that's a major piece of work
> and I wouldn't start it without having native japanese contacts to QA
> the result. (Red Hat also cited lack of FLOSS font support for indic as
> one reason they bought liberation, and indic is another major piece of
> work)

I am heading more towards Indic, I think: Perhaps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_script

> > Or is everyone very happy with Vera?
>
> Distributions are abandoning Vera for DejaVu since Vera coverage haven't
> evolved for years. But DejaVu is not perfect either — there's a lot of
> glyphs to add, and a lot of glyphs to perfect.

Sorry, I meant to say Vera-derived fonts, inclusive of DejaVu.

> You won't find a lot of work to do in the latin range though — what's
> missing is complex scripts.

:-)

-- 
Regards,
Dave