Font Identification from Rasagangadhara Printed Sampurnananda univ

[Krishnaprasad]

Dear all

Please any one help, me identifying the fonts from the book Rasagangadhara Volume 2, printed Sampurnananda Univeristy with Gurumarmaprakasha Vyakhya,
and edited by Sri Parasanatha dvivedi

[Nityanand Misra]

Looks similar to the APS DV family fonts, e.g. APS DV Stardust. Or could be one of the Chanakya clones (Walkman Chanakya 901?).

Check out samples of both these.

What are you trying to achieve?

[Krishnaprasad]

Thanks, I want to use the exact font to my upcoming sanskrit book. Thanks once again, but I could not download any fonts which you mentioned. Further help would be highly admired.

[Nityanand Misra]

On Sunday, December 8, 2013 5:28:59 PM UTC+8, Krishnaprasad wrote:

Thanks, I want to use the exact font to my upcoming sanskrit book. Thanks once again, but I could not download any fonts which you mentioned. Further help would be highly admired.

I do not know if the APS DV fonts are free or if they are copyrighted. If they are copyrighted, they may not be easily located on the web. Check with your printing press if they have a copy. Many printing businesses dealing with Hindi books have the APS DV fonts, I personally know some of them.

Unless you are typesetting (in addition to authoring) the book yourself, your printing press should take care of the fonts. Anyway typing in APS DV fonts is a nightmare (as it is not Unicode compliant). The best way is to finalize and edit the draft in Unicode and then use machine conversion to the APS DV fonts. There are free converters available on the net, but they do not work well for conjuncts and some glyphs. What i have tried in the past, when I was experimenting typesetting with some non-Unicode compliant fonts, is to extract all the distinct one-vowel sounds (what Panini calls "ekaac" in 1-1-14 निपात एकाजनाङ्) in the file and then find the right keystroke combination for the best rendering in the font and then do a sed substitution. 

Such tools are useful for end-to-end publishers - font designer + author/editor + typesetter.

 

[Krishnaprasad]

Misra ji
 Thanks a lot for your reply, I did couple of google searches yesterday and I found this link, http://vsoftsolutions.in/site/products/aps-designer-6/
there, in the list of fetures, they say unicode compliant, but unfortunately I don't know what is unicode compliant. I am typesetting and authoring the book.
Your reply helped me a lot. I will private email if I have any doubts.

[Nityanand Misra]

 

I have not tried the APS designer, I typeset books in XeLaTeX. Two of them are to be released soon, one in the next few days, and you can see if you like the typeset. LaTeX gives you full control of the typsetting process and though has a steep learning curve, is better than any other typesetting software that I know of.

 

The APS DV font series (Prakash, Priyanka, Stardust, etc) is certainly not Unicode compliant as far as I know.

 

In a Unicode-compliant font, the single character "क" or the Unicode value U+0915 ('DEVANAGARI LETTER KA' in the Unicode standard) is displayed as "क", with the glyph design different depending on the font (Mangal, Arial Unicode MS, Sanskrit 2003, Siddhanta, etc). Since the internal representation of the font corresponds to the Unicode Standard, the font is called Unicode-compliant. To convert from one font to another, you only need to select text and change the font.

 

In the APS DV font series, three characters "keâ" or the Unicode values U+006B U+0065 U+00E2 ('LATIN SMALL LETTER K' + 'LATIN SMALL LETTER E' + 'LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX' ) occuring in that order are displayed as  "क", with the glyph designs different for Prakash, Priyanka, Stardust. The first letter "k" produces the left part of the output, the second letter "e" produces the vertial danda, and the third letter "â" produces the right hook. The internal representation of the font does not correspond to Unicode standard.

[Krishnaprasad]

Misra Ji

Once again thanks for giving most useful information. Now I understood like this. I shall use XeLaTeX for typesetting and editing, and finally I am going to convert it to any of the APS DV fonts.? (Because for typesetting in XeLaTeX is easier and fonts from APS DV are beautiful). If I have mistaken something please suggest me. And I hope I am not giving hassle to you. And I hope to convert to APS DV fonts I need extra software.

[Nityanand Misra]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 12:05:34 PM UTC+8, Krishnaprasad wrote:

Misra Ji

Once again thanks for giving most useful information. Now I understood like this. I shall use XeLaTeX for typesetting and editing, and finally I am going to convert it to any of the APS DV fonts.? (Because for typesetting in XeLaTeX is easier and fonts from APS DV are beautiful). If I have mistaken something please suggest me. And I hope I am not giving hassle to you. And I hope to convert to APS DV fonts I need extra software.

No, typesetting will have to be done in the final font you want to use. The output of the typesetting in LaTeX is the PS/DVI/PDF document that would be printed as-is. All major and minor aspects including page size, chapter and section headings, page numbers, font size, paragraph spacing, indenting, non-breaking spaces, alignment, table of contents, etc are affected if the font is change, and will be messed up if the font is changed.

This is how I work - I have experimented with both Unicode and non-Unicode (APS DV/Walkman Chanakya fonts).

1. I complete all typing and editing in Microsoft Word using Unicode fonts. I do not begin typesetting at all until I am done with editing. I find the comments and track changes features in very useful for proofreading and editing. Plus if the work is in both Sanskrit and English, Word can help with spelling and grammar check.

2. I convert the final draft in Word to clean HTML using any of the free online converters like word2cleanhtml.com/. This gives me Unicode plain text with HTML tags. This is helpful since LaTeX's input is plain text and not rich text. 

3. If I am using a non-Unicode font for the typeset, I convert Unicode text to APS-DV/Chanakya using my own sed scripts, leaving the HTML tags as is. Here I take care of escape sequences in LaTeX. This step is not needed if i am typesetting in a Unicode font.

4. I then convert the HTML tags to LaTeX controls using sed scripts. 

Steps 1 to 4 are done for each chapter. This generates the XeLaTex files for each chapter.

5. Finally I typeset the book in XeLaTeX using the chapter files. 

I cannot show you an example output now - I am in Singapore currently on business and do not have access to my output files. However, I will share some sample output typesets with multiple fonts in a few days, with a basic guide to typeset Sanskrit books in XeLaTeX. 

 

[Krishnaprasad]

Misra Ji

Thanks a lot for giving detailed information.

One more information I need. I came to know APS designer is the software which provides APS DV Stardust fonts. Similarly I also want to know, which software provides Walkman Chanakya or 905 fonts?

[Mārcis Gasūns]

On Tuesday, 10 December 2013 11:51:45 UTC+4, Nityanand Misra wrote:

However, I will share some sample output typesets with multiple fonts in a few days, with a basic guide to typeset Sanskrit books in XeLaTeX. 

See

http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb23-1/trehan.pdf 

But by far more detailed is

http://www.garudam.info/critical-edition-typesetting-notes/

Would it be possible to make a video how you work with TeX-like files with Sanskrit?

[Nityanand Misra]

On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 8:54:06 PM UTC+8, Krishnaprasad wrote:

Misra Ji

Thanks a lot for giving detailed information.

One more information I need. I came to know APS designer is the software which provides APS DV Stardust fonts. Similarly I also want to know, which software provides Walkman Chanakya or 905 fonts?

The Chanakya font is developed by the company Summit Information Technology Pvt Ltd based in Gurgao. Their website is under http://summitindia.com/ Their client list is quite impressive and includes Gita Press Gorakhpur, which I know for a fact uses the original Chanakya font. Take a look at this book from Gita Press -  http://www.gitapress.org/books/paath/118/durga_saptashati.pdf

The Walkman Chanakya Series was developed by the company "Walkman Software Engineers" which was once based at 149, Anand Nagar, Inderlok, Delhi 110035. It has either moved  or wound up, as my Google search did not show up the company name at that address anymore.

You can take a look at the Śrīgītātātparya PDF I posted on this forum to get an idea of how typesetting with Sanskrit 2003 on XeLaTeX would look like. I am currently typesetting a document in XeLaTeX with more than 1,600 glyphs in 12 different forms including APS DV and Walkman Chanakya. I will share the same when done - then you can see which font appeals the most to you.

Meanwhile here is a book typeset in APS DV Stardust font using Page Maker 

http://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/pdfs/JR2011Gitaramayanam.pdf

As you would see APS DV is not as great as Sanskrit 2003, but is "good enough" and at least has a bold and normal version. 

[Mārcis Gasūns]

On Monday, 16 December 2013 13:49:22 UTC+4, Nityanand Misra wrote:

You can take a look at the Śrīgītātātparya PDF I posted on this forum to get an idea of how typesetting with Sanskrit 2003 on XeLaTeX would look like. I am currently typesetting a document in XeLaTeX with more than 1,600 glyphs in 12 different forms including APS DV and Walkman Chanakya. I will share the same when done - then you can see which font appeals the most to you.

Not 12, only 3 styles, but still http://yadi.sk/d/xvYET3U8ERUYm

Specially made a .doc macros that can show any text in many different Sanskrit fonts. At once, several parallel texts.

 

Meanwhile here is a book typeset in APS DV Stardust font using Page Maker 

http://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/pdfs/JR2011Gitaramayanam.pdf

As you would see APS DV is not as great as Sanskrit 2003, but is "good enough" and at least has a bold and normal version. 

Nice layout as well. Because of the bold / thin contrast. 

[Krishnaprasad]

Thanks a lot

[venkat veeraraghavan]

"However, I will share some sample output typesets with multiple fonts in a few days, with a basic guide to typeset Sanskrit books in XeLaTeX. "

Dear Misraji,

Apologies for opening up this old thread. Have you in this or any other thread given a basic guide to typeset Sanskrit in XeLaTex? There is no online resource that quite helps with this and it would be great if you can point me in the right direction.

In case, you have not made the basic guide  yet, would you consider making one? It would save a world of pain for noobs like me. 

Can you also share in this your tips on how to include the Vedic accents along with devanagari within XeLaTex?

Kind Regards,

Venkat