Final Call for Font workshop.
anyone???
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Hi All,
This is the final day (20th march 2003) for registration to the "The
First National Indic-Font workshop" to be held from 28th to 30th March
2003, at PESIT Bangalore, India. We request all members who wish to
participate to send in there applications by today. Although we have
been having very large no. of applications we are looking forward to
participation of all language groups which as of now are un represented.
Please find under the latest workshop updates and logistics information
for participants.
best
vijay
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Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
ekgaon technologies
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website: http://www.ekgaon.com
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Indic-Computing Consortium
Forging community partnerships to enable Indian language computing
The Indic-Computing Consortium is an initiative of software developers, businesses and academic institutions to help evolve appropriate standards, resources and technologies for the Indic-Computing community.
The Indic-Computing Consortium is designed as a national-level participatory organisation that serves as a common forum for discussion, information exchange and advocacy on behalf of all parties interested in the development of Indian Language Computing. The consortium aims to make true access of computing possible for Indian people by enabling support in local language.
A framework is being built for creation of a hierarchy of participatory consortia, which would facilitate broad regional and local participation in the standardization and development process from a variety of stakeholders with differing areas of expertise and specialization. It is aimed that these consortia be participatory and inclusive to properly represent the viewpoint of local developers, users and other stakeholders. In step two, Indic-Computing Consortium would encourage & support formation of state-level consortia for each regional language, which could include participants from the following key member groups:
Developers: Software developers and managers developing local-language tools
Technologists: Academics and other experts in encoding and representation issues
Users / Practioners: Government agencies, publishers, NGOs and other major users of local-language software
Linguistic Groups: Academics and other experts of the linguistic features of a language and it's script
Working closely with the State Government, this state-level consortium would serve as the representative body for deciding standards and other technical decisions for computing in a given regional language. The major roles to be carried out by the state-level consortium would be as follows:
Discuss various technical, linguistic and practical issues related to computing in the regional language
Serve as a capacity-building and educational resource for small regional software developers and users
Publish documents, tools & other materials helpful for local-language computing and development
Represent the regional language at National consortium meetings
Represent the regional language at International Standardization consortiums and proceedings such as Unicode and ISO
In September 2002 Indic-Computing organised its first National workshop, which aimed at finding the various problems faced by the developer communities and issues related to standardization, technical support, policy and tools. To know more about the consortium, workshops and other initiatives, visit us at http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net
Indic-Computing Consortium
announces
First National Indic-Font Workshop
Date: 28th to 30th March 2003
Venue: PESIT, Bangalore
Sponsors:
PESIT, Bangalore
Vishwa Kannada, Bangalore
DeepRoot Linux, Bangalore
CHiPS, Chattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society, Raipur
Sarai, New Delhi
Indlinux.org, Mumbai
ekgaon technologies, Madurai
The workshop:
One of the working groups formed at the first Indic-Computing workshop was for development of OTF & issues related to language standardization and representation in international consortium. One of the action point and agenda for the group was to Hold OTF training workshop for developing major Indian language OTF fonts . Dr. U B Pavanaja took upon to hold and coordinate this workshop and Mr. Abhas Abhinav proposed to coordinate for logistics & sponsorship, Mr. G. Nagarjuna proposed to help coordinate with Akruti for making available fonts to be used for develop OTF. This group succeeded in its tasks making this workshop possible, Akruti released some free fonts to be used for conversion to OTF, which were taken up by some of the language groups (for more details on the language groups and the major issues being dealt by it please go through the proceedings of first workshop at our website)
Some of the major concerns raised by the language community were:
i. Developing good look fonts
ii. Development of open source tools for rendering and hinting of OTF fonts (currently OTF development uses proprietary
tools)
iii. Finding font developers for all Indian languages and coordinating the group
iv. Making available fonts to be converted to OTF
This workshop seeks to address some of these issues and others enclosed in the workshop program as under. This is the first national workshop on the subject, while it shall focus on OTF, but it shall equally share concerns of open standards community and would have talks, demos and training sessions of open source tools, as well as various alternative technologies for Indian fonts. We propose to take up more regional language font workshops in future to give focused attention to each language, these workshops would be held all across India in different parts and would hold training programs and technology demonstration. We invite volunteers who would take upon to hold these workshops and provide coordination & logistics support. The Indic-Computing Consortium would provide necessary technical support and capacity building to these regional groups.
Why OpenType?
OpenType is an extension to TrueType, and uses Unicode as standard for character encoding. It also provides additional tables for defining rich set of mappings between characters and glyphs. It also provides for a having a large glyph set and even glyph variants. All the features provided by OpenType format can be made use by having a application independent, preferable system level library with a api interface usable by applications.
For Indic script processing OpenType tables like GSUB (glyph substitution) and GPOS (glyph positioning) gives font designer to define his rules on what conjuncts or combinations could be made available. Application programmer is relieved of the burden of knowing all the linguistic part. Also OpenType sort of makes the concept of glyph standard or font encoding standard redundant, again giving font vendors freedom to follow their own glyph sets and not really affecting the application. To summarize OpenType provides lot of benefits to Indic computing and also renders redundant some issues faced in Indic computing.
There has been an ongoing debate on whether OTF is right for Indian Languages. The debate is relevant and contextual also. One of the perspectives penned by G Karunakar in support of OpenType is here for participants to explore. However the debate goes on and we invite all to participate in it on the Indic-computing mailing list. For more click on why OTF?
Who can participate & pre-requisites:
Any developer/company/organization having interest in language technology and interested to learn development of OTF,understanding of Unicode, various technologies for Indian languages and related issues.
Pre-requites
*
Understand how to make a font
*
Knowledge of Unicode
*
Have a font that it/he/she can use for lab time
*
A willingness to keep trying until it/he/she understands
*
To get comprehensive information on pre-requisites mentioned above please go through the following links
*
Creating and supporting OpenType fonts for Indic scripts http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/indicot/default.htm
*
Building OTF http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/intro.htm
*
Details about VOLT http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/volt/default.htm
*
Unicode FAQ about Indic http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html
*
Unicode code charts http://www.unicode.org/charts/
How to participate:
i. The workshop is by registration only, last date of registration in 20th March 2003
ii. Participants interested to participate in the workshop should send there applications to Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
iii. Application format
* Name
* Organisation
* Communication Address
* Whether participating in individual capacity or representing your organization
* In either case please write in 200 words your interests and what do you expect
from the workshop
* If there are more then one participant from your organization/group please
provide the numbers and communication address only.
iv. Fill online application at http://www.realityinfo.com/indic/indic-comp.pdf
v. The registration fee of Rs. 200.00 is to be paid in cash by the participants on the first day.
vi. Participants please note that all registered members would get, literature, CD with important font development softwares, lodging and boarding for three days (also dinner for the night before the workshop starts).
vii. The workshop announcement and programme schedule in pdf could be downloaded from http://www.ekgaon.com/~vijay/indic-font-ws.pdf
Contacts:
Participants are advised to contact the following for there queries:
Dr. U B Pavanaja: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Technical clarification, sessions of the workshops, required preparation, fonts etc
Mr. Abhas Abhinav: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Logistics, Lodging & Boarding, Venue etc
Mr. Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Workshop registration application, coordination, any other issue not covered above
Instructions for Participants:
1) The participants are advised to go through the pre-requisites and equip themselves with necessary knowledge on font & Unicode standard.
2) The staying arrangements are from the evening before the day of start of the workshop. Dinner would be provided for the night also, for all participants reaching before 9.00 PM only.
3) The lodging & boarding provided by PESIT is in hostels & mess, and is modest by all means. Participants who wish to opt out of this arrangement can make there own staying arrangements. Please notify the same to us, also it is expected that the lunch would be taken by all the participants irrespective of there place of stay at mess only as there is not much time available in between the session.
4) The staying arrangement in the hostel is till 3rd day evening, it is expected that the participants would vacate the rooms by evening.
5) PESIT is at outskirts of Bangalore, participants are expected to make there own arrangements for local travel, as nothing could be provided by the organizers.
Venue & how to reach:
PESIT (PES Institute of Technology)
100 Feet Ring Road,
Banashankri IIIrd Stage, (Off. Mysore Road),
Bangalore.
Phone: (080) 672 0007.
For participants arriving at Airport, take a prepaid taxi to the above address, the place is known to the prepaid stand.
Directions from Airport:
Airport Road--->Domlur signal--->Inner ring road--->Koramangala--->BTM Layout--->Banneraghatta Road--->100 Feet (outer) ring road--->PESIT on 100 Feet (outer) Ring Road
For participants arriving at Railway station & Bus station, best is to take a prepaid taxi to the above address, the place is known to the prepaid stand. A Bus is also available
Directions from Railway Station:
Station--->Chamrajpate--->Ashram--->Hanumant Nagar--->Hosakerehalli--->PESIT 100 Feet Ring Road
Workshop program:
Day-1:
09:00 - 09:45 Registration
09:45 - 10:15 Welcome & Inauguration G Karunakar / Director PESIT
10:15 - 10:45 Overview - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Planning glyph repertoire - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to Indian scripts, Character set, tools & Glyph Design & current trends in fonts- Ravi Pande
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 - 15:00 Testing glyphs, Generating Fonts, Font format - Ravi Pande
15:00 - 15:15 Tea break
15:15 - 17.15 Lab: Define glyphs and fill out repertoire
17.15 - Tea & informal interaction
Day-2:
09:30 - 10:15 Encoding - G Karunakar
10:15 - 10:45 Introduction to OTF - Pavanaja
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Open Type Tables - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Introduction to VOLT - Pavanaja
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 Lab: Open type tables
Day-3:
09:30 - 10:15 Testing - Pavanaja
10:15 - 10:45 CDAC (to be confirmed)
10:45 - 11:00 Tea break
11:00 - 11:30 Digitally signing the font - Pavanaja
11:30 - 13:00 Fonts on Linux - Karunakar
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 Lab: Open type tables
Special presentations proposed:
a. Sunil Abraham, Mahiti, Bangalore, would arrange for an IPR (cyber laws) lawyer Lawrence Liang, who would discuss the issue of OTF openness after understanding the Adobe & Microsoft agreement on release of the fonts.
b. Development of Otf from Ttf (Akruti) experiences: Nagarjuna
c. Open/free software tools for Otf development: M Arun
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Information for participants:
All the participants who have registered to the Indic-Computing's "The First National Indic-Font workshop" to be held from 28th to 30th March 2003, at PESIT Bangalore, India is 20th march 2003. Here is some logistics related information, we require your cooperation to facilitate your stay in Bangalore during the workshop.
Accommodation:
1) We would only provide modest hostel accommodation at the PESIT, which would be free
2) Those who would like to make there own arrangement are encouraged
3) If you require our assistance in booking hotel for you, here are some rates detail, those
who wish that we book for them, please notify us by 15th March 2003, please send your travel
plan, we shall book for you, needless to say that cost would be borne by you. We cannot take
responsibility of non availability of rooms for applicants after 15th March 2002. These
hotels are near the Venue: (please write to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Jayanagar Guest House:
Non A/C with TV -> 385 Rs/day
Non A/C without TV -> 330 Rs/day
PAI Vijay Hotel:
Double Delux Non A/c -> 600 Rs/day
Double Delux A/c -> 800 Rs/day
Transport:
For Taxi the best option will be City taxies , you have to make a call and they will pick you from any place. The numbers for taxi are : 080-6780022/44/66.
Workshop:
a) 30 PCs with Win XP and RedHat (8.0) as dual boot pre installed are available for the
workshop lab work. Some basic software yet needs to be installed for the workshop (ex. VOLT,
VTT etc.), would be done in time. If there is any other requirement of participants/speakers
please let us know in advance. (please write to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
b) LCD Projector for presentation with audio system is available
c) Over Head Projector could also be made available, speakers who wish to use one,
please let us know in advance.
d) As per our instructions earlier the participants should bring the following things
with them for the seminar
1) Their own TTF font to be used for converting into OTF
2) Their own Floppy properly tested (to copy their work from the workshop)
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