Murasu Anjal on Mac OS

[ka...@hindu.org]

Muthu: thanks for starting this group...

Here at Kauai Aadheenam we have been using MylaiSri and are poised to
move to Unicode as soon as we have Tiger installed on all our machines.
You said in your email:

"We have had numerous requests for Murasu Anjal on Mac OS. Tiger
answers
most of this requirements." Can we infer from this that you do have
have a Tamil Unicode versionof Murasu Anjal? If so, where can we find
it?"

I'm not sure there is any point in us using AnjalMac, since we have no
documents in that font and our translators-collaborators mostly use
Windows machines so it seems best we move right up to Unicode, which is
available on Windows machines.

But, my knowledge in this area is very limited... Any clarity you or
anyone else can offer will be most appreciated. Satguru Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami successor: Bodhinatha, is quite interested that we
publish more things in Tamil and I need to get our font issues settled
and everyone who works with us all on the same platform... it seems
Tamil Unicode is the future.

Mikka Nandri!

Sivakatirswami
www.himalayanacademy.com
www.gurudeva.org/taka/

[Muthu]

Dear Swami,

Thank you for your email and I'm really pleased to know that you are
planning to publish more things in Tamil.

You are right about Unicode. It is the future and I suggest that you
do all your publishing work in that format - to ensure that is stays
"future compatible".

If you are getting Tiger and if your translators are using
Windows2000/WindowsXp, you already have the answers. The text that
they type in Windows using Unicode will be flawlessly rendered on
MacOS.

However, the number of software tools that currently support Unicode
are limited - but they are certainly growing in number.

Apple's iPages and Keynote work very well with Tamil Unicode text - you
may use them for your work. They both read Word and PowerPoint
documents prepared in Windows.

Hope this answers your question - please feel free to write and I'll be
happy to help.

anbudan,

~ MUTHU

[Sivakatirswami]

Vanakkam Muthu:

Thanks for your confirmation on using Unicode as the way to go.

Yes, more questions:

a) Can you point me to URLs where we can get some Unicade Tamil Fonts?
One of our goals is to broaden type style options in our Adobe
programs. All these years we have been limited to Ananku and Mylai-Sri,
but for many type effects we would like more "pretty" options. There
are so many beautiful options for Roman type, less so for Devanagiri,
but enough that we have some Devangiri fonts that can be used, but for
Tamil we are stuck with a range from "ugly" to "very ugly."

So, we are looking for a set of Tamil fonts that work in Unicode, some
of which would be better for text in, other which could serve a
beautiful display fonts in headlines or titles or online multi-media
things.

b) And, do we have some translators for transforming Mylai-Sri into
unicode Tamil.

c) investigation showed that many Tamil font pros were unhappy with the
unicode implementation because it was done by ISCII and the order of
the fonts did not follow the traditional Tamil alphabet collation. Was
this resolved or is it a non- issue for non-engineers?

d) Where can we find the keyboard layout for Unicode Tamil.

Thank you for your help! without it we would be lost (smile)

Om shanti
Sivakatirswami

[Muthu Nedumaran]

Dear Swami,

Please see my responses below:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sivakatirswami" <ka...@hindu.org>
To: <anja...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 1:02 AM
Subject: Re: Murasu Anjal on Mac OS


>
> Vanakkam Muthu:
>
> Thanks for your confirmation on using Unicode as the way to go.
>
> Yes, more questions:
>
> a) Can you point me to URLs where we can get some Unicade Tamil Fonts? One
> of our goals is to broaden type style options in our Adobe programs. All
> these years we have been limited to Ananku and Mylai-Sri, but for many
> type effects we would like more "pretty" options. There are so many
> beautiful options for Roman type, less so for Devanagiri, but enough that
> we have some Devangiri fonts that can be used, but for Tamil we are stuck
> with a range from "ugly" to "very ugly."

I am not aware of other Tamil Unicode fonts for Mac OS X. We are in the
process of converting our existing Windows Unicode fonts to Mac - these will
go into the AnjalMac package.

> So, we are looking for a set of Tamil fonts that work in Unicode, some of
> which would be better for text in, other which could serve a beautiful
> display fonts in headlines or titles or online multi-media things.

If you'd like to send me some sample text, I can send you back a PDF with
the text rendered in some of our fonts - in addition to InaiMathi which is
already in Tiger.

> b) And, do we have some translators for transforming Mylai-Sri into
> unicode Tamil.

We have a GUI based tool in Windows - but I can get you a command line tool
for Mac OS X, if you think that will help in the time being. It'll only
convert plain-text files, though.

> c) investigation showed that many Tamil font pros were unhappy with the
> unicode implementation because it was done by ISCII and the order of the
> fonts did not follow the traditional Tamil alphabet collation. Was this
> resolved or is it a non- issue for non-engineers?

IMHO, this is a non-issue. In Unicode, collation (sort) order is not the
same as code-point order.

> d) Where can we find the keyboard layout for Unicode Tamil.

In Tiger, you have two options - Anjal and Tamil99. Both are very popular
layout. Anjal is based on our transliteration scheme and Tamil99 is based
on conso-vowel combinations. You may want to check
http://www.murasu.com/help/quickstart.

In the AnjalMac product, we are attempting to include all the other layouts
we support in Windows - including Mylai and Typewriter layout. Mylai is a
layout introduced by Dr. Kalyanasundaram when he created the Mylai font.

> Thank you for your help! without it we would be lost (smile)

You are most welcome, Swami. We have been in this business since 1986 and
it's a joy to do it :-)

anbudan,

~ MUTHU