Thursday, June 10, 2010

Assamese fonts, problems and removing them

Since you must have noted that I write in my blog in Assamese fonts. To do this I use a bangla keypad software AVRO Keyboard. Avrokeybord is freely downlodable from http://www.omicronlab.com/, but, only this keyboard can not make you write in Assamese. You need to have a supporting OS (Operating System) and unicode compliant fonts.

Windows XP has support for Assamese typing but one has to install Complex Script Language pack from the installation CD. Vista, Windows 7 do not need any other installation. Then, you have to download some unicode assamese fonts. Since only assamese fonts are not available for free except Adarsha Ratne (but not a proper unicode font and has some very needed typing help is missing), you get some free bangla fonts. All free bangla fonts do have the assamese specifc ৰ And ৱ. you can get most of fonts from http://www.ekushey.org/. But, though the fonts are nice there is some difficulty as ৰু ৱু letters are not there. They do not have the ear-marked assamese RU and WU. But, these fonts can be added by modifying the fonts using some font editor program. While most font editors are expensive commercial product, I got http://www.fontforge.org/ which is an opensource program. Fontforge is for linux, but there are deportations in windows and I use mingw-deported fontforge. There I have created the missing letters and have solved some pairing problems.
Later on, I tweaked all the fonts in some or other way, and today, I found them working, which needs very minor modification. Which will be done in a few days. If anyone is interested in the new font you can mail me or just give your e-mail id by commenting.
We need a really beautiful font set for assamese letters. Because even in the fonts being used for books have minor problems which can be seen on closer observation.
I shall soon upload something with my fonts for all of you to see and to comment so that I can understand where are the mistakes and how can I correct them.
Come back soon.


1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Uddip

    Look forward to an update with simple instructions for people in a hurry! Please let me know about the updates at: http://technical-blog-sabhlok.blogspot.com/2010/09/assamese-in-wordpress.html

    I'm trying to write in Assamese on my blog (http://sabhlokcity.com/)

    ReplyDelete