Devanagari Typography Deconstructed

[Marcis Gasuns]

Namaste,

  Is there a book on devanagari typesetting? I know http://www.flickr.com/photos/typeoff/3867470934/ Naik, Bapurao S., Typography of Devanagari, Volume One. Bombay: Directorate of Languages (1971). But there is nothing about how an Indian printed book should look. What size of fonts, what spaces, which elements and where can one use, what are the best practices.

  So I took my ruler and looked at HOS, Nirnaya - the most authoritative text editions I could get. And what do I see. The gap between 2 lines of devanagari is 4 mm in a 15 pt font devanagari, that's what I see in Lanman. And Lanman's books, printed in Germany, are still the best out there. You know better than I what's the difference between books printed in India and books printed in Europe - Indian books are printed so often on bad paper with bad fonts so you have to break the eyes to decipher a ligature. It was so for the last 200 years.

  I'm working as an editor on a Sanskrit reader. The author insists on a 10 mm gap between nagari and transliterated text. I would say 6 mm is more than enough. Please see the attached .pdf and write what do you think. I think a gap too big is no good gap, it's harder to understand what belongs to what.

Marcis from Krasnodar,

http://ayurvedam.ru/

[Nityanand Misra]

On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 2:14:18 PM UTC+8, Marcis Gasuns wrote:

 You know better than I what's the difference between books printed in India and books printed in Europe - Indian books are printed so often on bad paper with bad fonts so you have to break the eyes to decipher a ligature. It was so for the last 200 years.

You mean books printed in India? That is news to me. I lived in India for 27 years. I must have been really lucky to have escaped those books.Maybe my past Karma was good. Or maybe I knew where to buy books from.

How many publishers have you surveyed to make a blanket claim like this? Do you fit a curve based on one or two points? Have you ever seen quality of books printed by reputed publishers like Gita Press, Chaukhambha, etc? Have you seen the various sizes of fonts in which Gita Press publishes different books? 

Regarding quality of paper, what do you expect when you can buy books for as low as INR 20 and INR 25 (< 0.4 USD). You can buy Gita Press' Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi in that amount. Did you expect glossy paper of coffee table books and Der Spiegel when you pay 0.4 USD? I do not know how much Springer Verlag would charge for that. 40 USD maybe? Price ratio? 1:100? Centum? Shatam? Hundert? Sto? 

Guess what, as long as book is readable and paper lasts for 4-5 years, most people do not care. Which is why students from Europe when they come to exchange programs in India buy the Eastern Economy Editions by the dozens for all their friends. Since the books are much cheaper and affordable here.

Do not compare the rip-off publication industry in Europe to Sanskrit publishing in India which is still a noble cause and profit margins are hardly any.

[Ajit Gargeshwari]

Any how this much I know, I have books from Vani Vilas Press, Nirnayasagar press, Balamanorama press which are more than a hundred years old and they are still readable and pages are not brittle and fonts are excellent.

Regards
Ajit Gargeshwari
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे।।2.20।।

--
निराशीर्निर्ममो भूत्वा युध्यस्व विगतज्वरः।। (भ.गी.)
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[Marcis Gasuns]

Namonamah!

On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 13:28:37 UTC+4, Nityanand Misra wrote:

On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 2:14:18 PM UTC+8, Marcis Gasuns wrote:

 You know better than I what's the difference between books printed in India and books printed in Europe - Indian books are printed so often on bad paper with bad fonts so you have to break the eyes to decipher a ligature. It was so for the last 200 years.

You mean books printed in India?

Yes, India. Bombay, Calcutta.

 

That is news to me. I lived in India for 27 years. I must have been really lucky to have escaped those books.Maybe my past Karma was good. Or maybe I knew where to buy books from.

I do not by Indian books. I scan them. Download them. Copy them. Most of the time I do not have the needed Indian book because it has been printed 100 years ago. So I see what becomes after Xerox. So karma does not matters, I guess. Living in India you can buy a lot of books. I saw that when I was in Delhi. But Russia is a bit different. You have to hunt for good books.

 

How many publishers have you surveyed to make a blanket claim like this?

Around 20.

 

Do you fit a curve based on one or two points?

Yes, sure I do.

 

Have you ever seen quality of books printed by reputed publishers like Gita Press, Chaukhambha, etc?

I think Chaukhambha is one of the best after Nirnaya, and even they make misserable books sometimes. I do not speak about the editorial quality or content. I speak only about how it's made. What book of Gita Press exactly are you speaking about, do you have a specimen of at least a single page?

 

Have you seen the various sizes of fonts in which Gita Press publishes different books? 

In the old days various font sizes had different ligatures. I hope thye have it, have they? And no, I have not seen, I guess.

 

Regarding quality of paper, what do you expect when you can buy books for as low as INR 20 and INR 25 (< 0.4 USD).

The paper actually is mostly fine, and I agree - prices are low.

 

You can buy Gita Press' Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi in that amount.

And I never will. Because you can not use such a book. I have an Indian Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi, a Nirnaya one - a fine book. But not for INR 25.

 

Did you expect glossy paper of coffee table books and Der Spiegel when you pay 0.4 USD? I do not know how much Springer Verlag would charge for that. 40 USD maybe? Price ratio? 1:100? Centum? Shatam? Hundert? Sto? 

40 - maybe. And I do not speak about glossy paper, you understand me perfectly.

 

Guess what, as long as book is readable and paper lasts for 4-5 years, most people do not care. Which is why students from Europe when they come to exchange programs in India buy the Eastern Economy Editions by the dozens for all their friends. Since the books are much cheaper and affordable here.

I do not speak about the book industry in general or price of college books in US. I speak about the typographical level of Sanskrit works printed in India.

 

Do not compare the rip-off publication industry in Europe to Sanskrit publishing in India which is still a noble cause and profit margins are hardly any.

When you deal with Sanskrit there is no profit. But not having any profit does not gives us the right to use bad fonts these days. Because fonts cost nothing or next to nothing, but a book can last a few hundred years. I only want to say you can make the same low price great book look even better, become readable. 

On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 13:34:53 UTC+4, ajit.gargeshwari wrote:

Any how this much I know, I have books from Vani Vilas Press, Nirnayasagar press, Balamanorama press which are more than a hundred years old and they are still readable and pages are not brittle and fonts are excellent.

http://archive.org/details/SiddanthaKoumudhi

Attached a Balamanorama book - if it's fine with you than I can say - it's not the same with me.

And yes I do have fine books from India - but they are reprints of older books most of the time.

[Nityanand Misra]

On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 7:51:31 PM UTC+8, Marcis Gasuns wrote:

Namonamah!

 

That is news to me. I lived in India for 27 years. I must have been really lucky to have escaped those books.Maybe my past Karma was good. Or maybe I knew where to buy books from.

I do not by Indian books. I scan them. Download them. Copy them. Most of the time I do not have the needed Indian book because it has been printed 100 years ago. So I see what becomes after Xerox. So karma does not matters, I guess. Living in India you can buy a lot of books. I saw that when I was in Delhi. But Russia is a bit different. You have to hunt for good books.

 

In a single paragraph you say "you do not have the needed Indian book" and "in India you can buy books easily whereas in Russia you need to hunt" and yet again "Karma does not matter". Self contradiction.
 

How many publishers have you surveyed to make a blanket claim like this?

Around 20.

 

Please list them and enlighten us what you mean by "bad font". What is bad for you is good for somebody else. Probably you are a bad reader when it comes to Nagari in books printed in India.

 

Do you fit a curve based on one or two points?

Yes, sure I do.

 

Great, then you cannot understand non-linearity.
 

Have you ever seen quality of books printed by reputed publishers like Gita Press, Chaukhambha, etc?

I think Chaukhambha is one of the best after Nirnaya, and even they make misserable books sometimes. I do not speak about the editorial quality or content. I speak only about how it's made. What book of Gita Press exactly are you speaking about, do you have a specimen of at least a single page?

 

What do you mean by "miserable book"? I have been using Chaukhambha books for years without any complaint at all. You can check Gita Press website for some sample GP books. When whole of India has no problem with it, I do not know why one Russian's opinion even matters.
 

Have you seen the various sizes of fonts in which Gita Press publishes different books? 

In the old days various font sizes had different ligatures. I hope thye have it, have they? And no, I have not seen, I guess.

I do not understand why you need a different ligature for a different size?
 

 

Regarding quality of paper, what do you expect when you can buy books for as low as INR 20 and INR 25 (< 0.4 USD).

The paper actually is mostly fine, and I agree - prices are low.

 

You earlier said "bad paper", now you say "mostly fine". Make up your mind first.
 

You can buy Gita Press' Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi in that amount.

And I never will. Because you can not use such a book. I have an Indian Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi, a Nirnaya one - a fine book. But not for INR 25.

I have been using it for years. No problem at all. Maybe "you" cannot use the book for some reason, I can very well use it.
 

 

Did you expect glossy paper of coffee table books and Der Spiegel when you pay 0.4 USD? I do not know how much Springer Verlag would charge for that. 40 USD maybe? Price ratio? 1:100? Centum? Shatam? Hundert? Sto? 

40 - maybe. And I do not speak about glossy paper, you understand me perfectly.

 

40 USD or price ratio of 40? Whatever, if you know the price ratio, stop complaining about quality of paper. If you do not understand economics, not our problem. Pay more, get more.
 

Guess what, as long as book is readable and paper lasts for 4-5 years, most people do not care. Which is why students from Europe when they come to exchange programs in India buy the Eastern Economy Editions by the dozens for all their friends. Since the books are much cheaper and affordable here.

I do not speak about the book industry in general or price of college books in US. I speak about the typographical level of Sanskrit works printed in India.

I do not understand your problem to begin with. I do not know which ISO standard of "typographical level" you want us to conform to. Guess what, even if you do, publishers do not care and readers like me (majority of Sanskrit readers in India) also do not care. Please start your own press and print books with high typographical level which pleases you.
 

 

Do not compare the rip-off publication industry in Europe to Sanskrit publishing in India which is still a noble cause and profit margins are hardly any.

When you deal with Sanskrit there is no profit. But not having any profit does not gives us the right to use bad fonts these days. Because fonts cost nothing or next to nothing, but a book can last a few hundred years. I only want to say you can make the same low price great book look even better, become readable. 

I never faced this problem of font in most publishers whose books I buy.
 

On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 13:34:53 UTC+4, ajit.gargeshwari wrote:

Any how this much I know, I have books from Vani Vilas Press, Nirnayasagar press, Balamanorama press which are more than a hundred years old and they are still readable and pages are not brittle and fonts are excellent.

http://archive.org/details/SiddanthaKoumudhi

Attached a Balamanorama book - if it's fine with you than I can say - it's not the same with me.

And yes I do have fine books from India - but they are reprints of older books most of the time.

In all three examples, I would say the scan quality is bad, and maybe the scanned book is in bad condition, and you are blaming the font for it!! The same book scanned at higher resolution would be just fine. It is common sense that any old book when photocopied and then scanned at low resolution and then converted into black and white would be difficult to read. You are blaming the font when in fact it is the digitization which is bad!

[Marcis Gasuns]

Nityanand,

  Have you seen Monier's Dictionary or Lanman's Reader? Even if you photocopy them 20 times, they will still remain clear. That's the matter of font - a good font does not cares what you do with it - it remains crisp. It's not about money. India could do it. But does she cares for it? And yes, I deal not with books but scans. And that is not the problem. Open Apte yourself, open Kale's printed editions - the print is so bad, that I wonder why it has had so many reprints, but was never re-typed. Devanagari books printed in Europe - yes, some may even cost $20 but can be Xeroxed and will still be readable. Apte's new editions are not readable from the beginning. And it costs nothing to fix that. It's a matter of ignorance. 

  Take a look at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasyoun/

  Do you agree?

Marcis

[rniyengar]

The debate seems to miss an important technical issue concerning how Sanskrit books were printed in India in the thirties to fifties to seventies. The font did matter for quality. This is not to do with 10 point, 12 point, antic etc. but how the letters were cast in the foundry. Depending on the sharpness of the face and the mechanical strength of the types the faces got worn out. I am from a Sanskrit publishing house (not active any more). I had to compose (or type set) manually and after the printing of the form (8 pages or 16) was over, the set matter had to be distributed back manually into the cases for the next composing cycle. Lead being a soft material it would get worn out quickly. Depending on the financial position the press had to get new letters cast. Hence from the same press difeerent books would look differently to the trained eye. Note the publisher and the press were not always same except perhaps for Geeta press, Nirnayasagar and perhaps Venkateshwara steam press in Bombay. Now of course this way of printing (letter press) is obsolete! Sanskrit (Devanagari) composing needed justification (technical word known among printers and compositors of old times!). English did not need this. This was meant to account for the anusvaras and the lower level ligatures (u, U, R) marks. One had to use halfbody types with cut corners and adjust the lower marks such that the top hoizontal line remained really horizontal! Hence I agree that the print quality whatever may be the paper was not uniform and varied over time. Added to this, low budget Sanskrit books were brought out on Treadle printers (Foot operated machines) which could not give uniform force on the paper. I am not surprised if the scan quality of such books remains poor.

RN Iyengar

[Ashok Aklujkar]

Without meaning disrespect to either party, I wish to say that I do not like the tone this discussion has assumed. 

I suspect that a cultural divide and language problem have also played some part in taking the discussion to the direction it has.

To bring the discussion back to the main or starting point, let me say the following as one who has almost equal experience inside and outside India and who has taken his university's library from a single book in Nagari script to several thousand books in that script -- who has looked at practically all kinds of Sanskrit publications from India and other countries: 

1. The standard of Sanskrit printing was indeed deteriorating (in terms of clarity, paper used, attractive or reader-friendly page set-up, consistency in observing text presentation convention etc.) from about 1950s to the introduction of computer-based printing in the last decade or so. What the presses like Nirnaya Sagar and Vani-vilasa had achieved was generally lost. Now with computer-based printing there is a chance to recover the lost ground, but, unfortunately, the number of truly competent and dedicated Sanskritists has gone down. As in several other walks of life in India, the 'calataa hai / anything goes' attitude has asserted itself also in Sanskrit studies. In addition, the makers on educational policies have not realized that there is a national crisis in the humanities and its presence in a field like Sanskrit is going to be especially harmful; it is going to cause irreparable cultural damage, which will not be a good development for India or the rest of the world.

(Before anyone begins to throw bricks at me, let me clarify that I am aware of several excellent and dedicated Sanskritists in different parts of India. I also value the several new initiatives recently taken by such bodies as the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. The truly relevant questions are: Is the number sufficient for the cultural task ahead? Does it become -- is it a matter of credit to -- a country of more than one billion people having a long tradition of an enviably sophisticated and diverse intellectual culture? How many Sanskritists see beyond their own life times? Do they have fire in their bellies that is needed to change things around?)

2. To see objectively where things are and where they should be in the matter at hand: Compare, FOR EXAMPLE, (a) the old Trivandrum Sanskrit Series editions and the editions done in the 1970s and later in the same series, (b) any Raghu-va.m;sa edition recently done by an Indian scholar or institution and the Raghu-va.m;sa edition of the first six sargas with Vallabha-deva's commentary prepared by Professors Dominik Goodall and Harunaga Isaacson and published by the French Institute of Indology at Pondicherry, and (c) the Oxford reprints of Monier-Williams' dictionary and the Indian reprints of the same. 

3. If one is born with a lot of Sanskrit words already known (as I fortunately am and as most members of this discussion list are), using a later edition or reprint of Apte's Sanskrit-English dictionary does not present an immediately noticeable problem, but try to imagine what the experience of a person born in a culture not abounding in Sanskrit words would be. Such a person cannot, for example, intuitively figure out that the intended word form is dharma, not gharma. I have stopped recommending Apte to my beginning students for more than thirty years. I recommend Macdonell and Cappeller, although their Nagari font style is different from the one introduced in my _Sanskrit: an Easy Introduction to an Enchanting Language_. So, there is considerable truth in what Dr. Gasuns says, even if one were to find fault with the way he has expressed himself.  

(Incidentally, the language blessed with the best practical dictionary of Sanskrit (best on the counts of judiciously chosen content, excellent paper and clear print), as far as I know, is the little known sister language of Spanish called Catalan: compiler: Dr. Oscar Pujol Riembau ["Pujol" is pronounced like "Puhol"]; title: _ Diccionari Sanscrit-Catala_; publication details: Barcelona: Enciclopedia Catalana. 2005. I have suggested to Dr. Pujol that he should replace the explanations in Catalan with English explanations and publish an English version of his dictionary in order to serve the cause of Sanskrit on a wider scale.)

I have first-hand experience of how economic forces make it unavoidable for Sanskritists to live with poor quality paper and substandard presses. I am also aware that Indian printing standard as a whole is not bad. Still, the immediately relevant question for those on this list is, "Why Sanskrit printing in India is not at least as good as, say, English printing?" 

Informed, systematic, sustained and self-critical introspection by Indian Sanskritists is the need of the hour. Sanskritists aware of ground realities, objective in their assessment,  intelligent enough to find the precisely needed solutions and practicing karma-yoga will save Sanskrit, not repetitions of nationalistic generalizations or of platitudes received second-hand and third-hand. 

a.a.

[Mārcis Gasūns]

Please understand I don't want to offend Indians. India would not be possible without them.

But more than Indians I love books made with love. What about Indian books made with love?

Iyengar, thank you so much for your technical details. Is there a book or an article about the history of the process you describe? I would love to hear more details, maybe a photo.

On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 19:47:48 UTC+4, rniyengar wrote:

The debate seems to miss an important technical issue concerning how Sanskrit books were printed in India in the thirties to fifties to seventies.

Yes, I fully agree. Because all I know are some MA Thesis on this topic at Reading University in UK.

 

The font did matter for quality. This is not to do with 10 point, 12 point, antic etc. but how the letters were cast in the foundry.

How many point did you have? 8, 10, 12, 18 - how many actually? 1 style or several? Who cast them? Every foundry for itself or they where bought in Bombay?

 

Depending on the sharpness of the face and the mechanical strength of the types the faces got worn out.

This is understood, but how fast? What I see from Jataka-Mala (HOS 1) the book was published by Drugulin. And it's crystal crisp. I have studied the works of Drugulin and even wrote an article about his books in Russian. It's amazing what the Germans did with Oriental language fonts.

 

I am from a Sanskrit publishing house (not active any more).

How many years did it last? Where was it located?

 

I had to compose (or type set) manually and after the printing of the form (8 pages or 16) was over, the set matter had to be distributed back manually into the cases for the next composing cycle. Lead being a soft material it would get worn out quickly. Depending on the financial position the press had to get new letters cast.

For how many books / pages would it last? What was the price for a new set?

 

Hence from the same press difeerent books would look differently to the trained eye.

Yes, there is even some beauty in it. Because nowadays books look sterile :)

 

Note the publisher and the press were not always same except perhaps for Geeta press, Nirnayasagar and perhaps Venkateshwara steam press in Bombay.

That's interesting. Never heard about the Venkateshwara.

 

Now of course this way of printing (letter press) is obsolete! Sanskrit (Devanagari) composing needed justification (technical word known among printers and compositors of old times!). English did not need this. This was meant to account for the anusvaras and the lower level ligatures (u, U, R) marks. One had to use halfbody types with cut corners and adjust the lower marks such that the top hoizontal line remained really horizontal!

Could you please go in some more details? It's very interesting to read. That's exactly what I'm fighting in the Open Type features of the replica font used in the samples in the first post.

 

Hence I agree that the print quality whatever may be the paper was not uniform and varied over time. Added to this, low budget Sanskrit books were brought out on Treadle printers (Foot operated machines)

Treadle printers - never heard of them. Europe had some strong presses.

 

which could not give uniform force on the paper. I am not surprised if the scan quality of such books remains poor.

Yes, it's poor. What surprises me is poor press on grammar treatises. You just can't read or have to sit down and figure. It takes time. That's a waste of time. If it happens on every single page - you get tired.

 

Dear Prof. Aklujkar,

I'm glad to see you around.

On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 21:29:18 UTC+4, Ashok Aklujkar wrote:

Without meaning disrespect to either party, I wish to say that I do not like the tone this discussion has assumed. 

The tone was not intented to be harsh. But it's not mild as well :)

 

I suspect that a cultural divide and language problem have also played some part in taking the discussion to the direction it has.

No, only types and fonts, nothing else, I hope.

 

To bring the discussion back to the main or starting point, let me say the following as one who has almost equal experience inside and outside India and who has taken his university's library from a single book in Nagari script to several thousand books in that script -- who has looked at practically all kinds of Sanskrit publications from India and other countries: 

That's some fascinating experience and if there would be any chance to write it down in details I would be more than happy. But I guess it's interesting only for me.

 

1. The standard of Sanskrit printing was indeed deteriorating (in terms of clarity, paper used, attractive or reader-friendly page set-up, consistency in observing text presentation convention etc.) from about 1950s to the introduction of computer-based printing in the last decade or so.

The issue is in Europe it was lost after 1928, so even before (because the spreading of Linotype press in Germany and Russia). Up to 10 crisp Nagari books where printed until 1950, after that it was lost. Everything was lost.

 

What the presses like Nirnaya Sagar and Vani-vilasa had achieved was generally lost.

Yes, yes, yes. That is what I mean. Once they were brilliant, afterwards it was lost and never it came back. Not yet. It has to be documented. It has to be explored in detail.

 

Now with computer-based printing there is a chance to recover the lost ground, but, unfortunately, the number of truly competent and dedicated Sanskritists has gone down. As in several other walks of life in India, the 'calataa hai / anything goes' attitude has asserted itself also in Sanskrit studies. In addition, the makers on educational policies have not realized that there is a national crisis in the humanities and its presence in a field like Sanskrit is going to be especially harmful; it is going to cause irreparable cultural damage, which will not be a good development for India or the rest of the world.

Yes, but only a chance. The PC by itself does not solve any issues. You get even more of them - Unicode is not fit for nagari, especially Vedic and Unicode is declining the changes that need to be made. So you have Unicode issues, Devanagari issues, InDesign issues -it's a whole new undocumented wild world. And if you don't follow a traditional way of printing a fine book - you make rubbish. Crisp rubbish. Rubbish on white paper. But it does not matters - it's rubbish.

 

(Before anyone begins to throw bricks at me, let me clarify that I am aware of several excellent and dedicated Sanskritists in different parts of India. I also value the several new initiatives recently taken by such bodies as the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. The truly relevant questions are: Is the number sufficient for the cultural task ahead? Does it become -- is it a matter of credit to -- a country of more than one billion people having a long tradition of an enviably sophisticated and diverse intellectual culture? How many Sanskritists see beyond their own life times? Do they have fire in their bellies that is needed to change things around?)

Yes, that is what I have thought many times lately about. Around billion people, so devanagari is spread rather wide - but it's used as... slogans and that's all. You can't print a book that will make you want to cry from how nice looking it is. And it's not only about the fonts - the spacing, layout - it's not that easy. But there are good books we can look at from the past. Do we look at them enough?

 

2. To see objectively where things are and where they should be in the matter at hand: Compare, FOR EXAMPLE, (a) the old Trivandrum Sanskrit Series editions and the editions done in the 1970s and later in the same series, (b) any Raghu-va.m;sa edition recently done by an Indian scholar or institution and the Raghu-va.m;sa edition of the first six sargas with Vallabha-deva's commentary prepared by Professors Dominik Goodall and Harunaga Isaacson and published by the French Institute of Indology at Pondicherry, and

 I will have to track down the Goodall edition. But the examples you bring up are very important for me. That's what I mean - it costs us nothing to it right now, only knowledge. How long are we going to stay ignorant? Why do we ignore what we've learned from the past?

(c) the Oxford reprints of Monier-Williams' dictionary and the Indian reprints of the same. 

This one would be enough :) No, I like how the Indians have cropped the page size, but it's lost the readability. 

3. If one is born with a lot of Sanskrit words already known (as I fortunately am and as most members of this discussion list are), using a later edition or reprint of Apte's Sanskrit-English dictionary does not present an immediately noticeable problem, but try to imagine what the experience of a person born in a culture not abounding in Sanskrit words would be. Such a person cannot, for example, intuitively figure out that the intended word form is dharma, not gharma. I have stopped recommending Apte to my beginning students for more than thirty years. I recommend Macdonell and Cappeller, although their Nagari font style is different from the one introduced in my _Sanskrit: an Easy Introduction to an Enchanting Language_.

I could remake your Book and it would look like Macdonell and Capeller. They have been printed with the Uenger type which was developed in Berlin and since 2005 I've spent months exploring it, documenting, scanning - to show the world what a beauty we have lost. In Edinburgh, United Kingdom, in July 2006 I wanted to make a paper about the history of Nagari types in Europe. But it was declined for the 13th World Sanskrit Conference. So I made a paper about dhatus. But to print the dhatus (as they should be) there is only one font available as for now, one font that shows all the anubandhas right. It was made my a colleague of mine from Belarus (so a non-Indian). It has more ligatures than the previous Indian fonts for Hindi taken together. So why do people outside India care for the script more than people inside India? That's my question, but there might not be no simple answer.

 

So, there is considerable truth in what Dr. Gasuns says, even if one were to find fault with the way he has expressed himself.  

I did not want to sound harsh. But since 2002 I've spent so much time on the font issue not because I love it, but because there is so much to do that you can not even print a book using Indian fonts. There are some proprietary nicely bundled fonts, but they are not public.

 

(Incidentally, the language blessed with the best practical dictionary of Sanskrit (best on the counts of judiciously chosen content, excellent paper and clear print), as far as I know, is the little known sister language of Spanish called Catalan: compiler: Dr. Oscar Pujol Riembau ["Pujol" is pronounced like "Puhol"]; title: _ Diccionari Sanscrit-Catala_; publication details: Barcelona: Enciclopedia Catalana. 2005. I have suggested to Dr. Pujol that he should replace the explanations in Catalan with English explanations and publish an English version of his dictionary in order to serve the cause of Sanskrit on a wider scale.)

He's working on a Spanish edition, so I guess English will have to wait. I do hope he'll consider my dictionary critique, as I've spent years in looking for different dhatus in different dictionaries. It has many typographical issues as well - but they are totally of a different nature.

 

I have first-hand experience of how economic forces make it unavoidable for Sanskritists to live with poor quality paper and substandard presses. I am also aware that Indian printing standard as a whole is not bad. Still, the immediately relevant question for those on this list is, "Why Sanskrit printing in India is not at least as good as, say, English printing?" 

And what does it costs to be such these days? Nothing. It costs the same. But the knowledge is lost.

 

Informed, systematic, sustained and self-critical introspection by Indian Sanskritists is the need of the hour. Sanskritists aware of ground realities, objective in their assessment,  intelligent enough to find the precisely needed solutions and practicing karma-yoga will save Sanskrit, not repetitions of nationalistic generalizations or of platitudes received second-hand and third-hand. 

Karma-yoga - yes, you can name it so. I call it the font hell. I want to get out of it. I'm tired of it. Let's get out of it. Let's write the story, so we don't have to come back to the basics again.

Mārcis Gasūns (मार्चिस् गसून्स्), the everlasting student of Palsule and dhatupathas 

[Nityanand Misra]

Dr Aklujkar, 

I am sorry for the tone this discussion acquired, but the judgmental words in the initial post belied a complete lack of understanding of a different country, and the poster then completely redacted his "bad paper" remarks when the economics were brought up. 

Anyway my final comments on this thread. 

I volunteer for an Ashram that publishes many Samskrita and Hindi books. We work in a no-profit no-loss model. Our books are priced just enough to recover publication costs and storage costs. We do not even have money to publish, we have to find a donor (most often a Dharmic Marwari/Gujarati/Agarwal businessman helps us) to finance it. We distribute books for as low as INR 10, INR 15 and INR 20. We published 1,100 copies of a book in 2000 with more than 1,000 full-size (similar to A4) pages in black and white and 72 plates in high-quality colour photographs. The book was priced at INR 250, to recover the printing cost, payment to editors, storage costs. All copies of the book were sold out shortly, but had we priced higher, it would have been out of reach for most of our target readers. A scholar translated the book in English and printed the same with an English publisher. Roughly same number of pages in English, same number of high-quality plates in colour and even the proofreading was not done well. The book was priced at Rs. 5000!! Same book at 20 times the price(somebody must have got rich in the process). Still I think most of our books have good fonts and are easily readable. 

I have studied the modern day end-to-end supply chain price dynamics of Samskrita and Hindi books in Uttar Pradesh. This is an area where most books are sold below INR 100 and many even at INR 30 and INR 20, and Gita Press booklets at even INR 5 and INR 2. Guess what the publisher gets? Out of 100 Rupees spent in buying a book, around 40 goes to distributor/retailer, around 40-50 towards paper/typesetting/composing/printing/transport/royalty, we are looking at best INR 10-20 for the poor publisher. If the publisher could afford to price books at twenty times, the printing quality would definitely be much better.

At the end of the day, it is microeconomics at work. Demand drives the fair price. Price constrains product quality. 

Still I think the biggest publishers in this area today - Gita Press, Motilal Banarsidass, Chaukhambha, have had good quality fonts for quite some time. 

Is this is not a good font - http://www.gitapress.org/BOOKS/GITA/18/18_Gita.pdf - then I do not know what a good font is.

Now if the westerners find problems reading scans of photocopies of low-price books, why are the Indian publishers to blame? 

[V Subrahmanian]

I share the opinion expressed on the Apte dictionary.  The Sanskrit-English one has several pages where it is almost a challenge to locate the words and read the meanings.  The student's English-Sanskrit, of year 2002, is no better.  The fonts and the inking are bad.  Paper too is a casualty.  Compare this with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, a copy of which, over a 100 years old,  with me, where the paper, the fonts and the print are so nice.  Even the lines in smaller-than-the-normal-sized fonts are readable with great clarity.     

regards
subrahmanian.v

[Mārcis Gasūns]

I totally agree.

On Thursday, 18 July 2013 06:47:40 UTC+4, V Subrahmanian wrote:

I share the opinion expressed on the Apte dictionary.  The Sanskrit-English one has several pages where it is almost a challenge to locate the words and read the meanings.  The student's English-Sanskrit, of year 2002, is no better.  The fonts and the inking are bad.  Paper too is a casualty.  Compare this with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, a copy of which, over a 100 years old,  with me, where the paper, the fonts and the print are so nice.  Even the lines in smaller-than-the-normal-sized fonts are readable with great clarity.     

If there would not be the copyright issue, I would print myself http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/apte/ with a crisp font like Monier-Williams did. But as I do not know whom to pay and how much for the copyrights Apte will be in bad print forever, I guess. Oxford is the standard we should at least try to revive.

I attach samples of Varanasi printing from 2004.

[Ajit Gargeshwari]

What font to use what quality of paper needs to be used and what the cost of a book needs to be are something that an author and publishers need to discuss. The historical and cultural reasons why a font  and why a particular quality of paper was used  has been discussed. The bottom line of  Nityanand's view about the economics involved I agree.

When the task of printing thousands of books still available only in manuscripts is yet to be done why should one really bother about reprinting Aptes dictionary. The money available to Sanskrit and Indological studies in general is small so let us make best use of the limited money and resources one has for very urgent and important issues which directly affect Sanskrit researchers in India an around the world.

I appreciate though the efforts put bu Dr. Gasuns in trying  to bring newer and better quality editions than better an updated dictionaries. I don't know if BVP would be the place to discuss more an in detail about printing.

By this post i don't mean to disrespect any of the parties who are involved in this discussion Now let keep the focus back on issues scholars really face.

Thanks

Regards
Ajit Gargeshwari
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे।।2.20।।

--

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

About reprinting old books like Apte’s & MMW’s Skt-Eng dictionaries it seems that we are missing the most desirable action in this regard that requires help from the Government. The said dictionaries were composed in the 19^th century. Often they do not satisfy the needs of advanced research. I have to take recourse to various measures like consulting Wackernagel-Debrunner(1895, 1930, 1954, 1955) through Hauschild’s Register, Mayrhofer’s Etymologisches Worterbuch and indexed studies like those by Louis Renou, Karl Hoffmann etc. But most of the observations made by these 20^th century scholars will be found in the Deccan College Etymological Dictionary.  This dictionary is most up to date and at the same time the price is prohibitive. Can we think of a cheap hardcopy edition and/or an easily accessible online version of this great dictionary? This can be made feasible with government help or as in the 19^th century of the Śabdakalpadruma, with generous donation from individual patrons of learning. The difficulty is that Radhakanta Debs will not be born again. Patrons of learning do not fund dictionary publication. Only the government can be of help.

Best

DB   

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[Ajit Gargeshwari]

The dictionaries published by the the Decann College under Sources of Indo Aryan Lexicography at least most of them under their series are available on DLI website. Probably with some funding or with the help of volunteers who would be interested after taking the necessary permissions from the copywriter holders one can create a comprehensive online searchable dictionary similar to the ones we have on MW, Apte etc. Scholars can also contribute the necessary amendments to the orginals published to make it comprehensive and up to date.

That might be the practical way out considering the huge costs that would incurred if one were to reprint a hard copy of all reference dictionaries. A thought after reading Prof Bhattacharya's post.

Regards
Ajit Gargeshwari
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे।।2.20।।

[Veeranarayana Pandurangi]

yes
i agree this is very important issue. generally i wonder how people tolerate it. i am speaking of computer fonts used nowadays in newspapers are general public use. in jaipur people normally use devlyias a font that resembles krimis/worms. i hate it. devnagari is widespread in north but aesthetics of fonts is too bad. even now many people use shrilipi 960/962/964 etc. which i resented comparing them to nirnayasagara fonts.
but i see no problem on letter press font used in books till early nintees. they are beautifull.Marcis may not agree with it.
but for most of indians there is no problem in gita press laghukaumudi or apte's dictionary. but MW fonts as well as old calcutta fonts look like worms for me eventhough they may be sharp. loko bhinnaruchih. nirnayasagar is ultimate for me. i wonder why nobody creats unicode nirnayasagara fonts?  but now we have sanskrit 2003 for unicode which almost looks like old nirnayasagara font. and certainly it is not my job to do it. if Marcis is able to do it, it is most welcome. dear marcis on behalf of one billion people i request you to replicate nirnayasagar fonts for both unicode and non unicode and freely disttribute. please do it rather than blaming bad aptes.

moreover most of indian pandits are worried about content and not fonts nor sharpness. whatever font you feed they will chew it.
they used whatever local press was available for them. though they would welcome beautifull fonts that was not priority.

but it is totally unacceptable to blame us being "proud of our granpas works" . i request Marcis to use noble words.

[Mārcis Gasūns]

Nityanand, I see you are on the side of lynching people only because that they say that something that is done is not perfect. It's not a discussion. It used to be different in India when Stcherbatskoy left it in 1909 (Bombay). If I would not love India, would I spend years and money in reconstructing what was once the art of devanagari typography?

You say "Is this is not a good font - http://www.gitapress.org/BOOKS/GITA/18/18_Gita.pdf - then I do not know what a good font is." I attached screenshots from the .pdf file. It's a fine Nirnayasagar's replica, but kerning and font features are not set. Some mistakes in glyph composition are rude, some are small - anyway, it's not the way it should be. The matras are "dancing", jumping on each other or they fly away when they should sit together.

As per Ajit's "What font to use what quality of paper needs to be used and what the cost of a book needs to be are something that an author and publishers need to discuss." - do the author knows at all what is there to choose from? Does the publisher cares? If we say "economics involved" than it's someone else's fault. Not us. No, the goverment is guilty. World economic is the reason why we don't make books with a readable layout. I do not blame anybody else. I blame myself. If I can't stop the wheel, who can? If other's like the books as they are - great. Not me. I want to bring back the lost tradition. Indian tradition. Built by non-Indians. Cast in lead.

As per "task of printing thousands of books still available only in manuscripts is yet to be done why should one really bother about reprinting Aptes dictionary" I can only say that this is a new point of view for me. So yes, we should not care about Apte. Who cares about Apte, actually? I was wrong.

As per most honorable Mr. Bhattacharya's "missing the most desirable action in this regard that requires help from the Government" - I disagree. Mayrhofer was under 30 when he started to work on Mayrhofer’s Etymologisches Worterbüch. And was one of the scholars who said only complimentary words about the font which I showed him in letters to him before his death. A Goverment can not make a dictionary. A university can not. Monier worked on his own. Boethlingk did the same. Pujol? He's all alone. I have studied the biographies of Sanskrit lexicographers for the last two centuries and before. You can not make a dictionary if someones else is responsible, if someone else is to blame. It took 22 years to make PWK. But it's the biggest and will remain the biggest dictionary for the nearest 50-100 years. And no, "observations made by these 20th century scholars will be found in the Deccan College Etymological Dictionary" - it will take 700 to 900 years to finish the dictionary at the speed at which it is made now. I've read all the printed reviews available. I've read the dictionary plan, before the whole work started. It will never be finished. And even now EWA is not used in the last edition. "Can we think of a cheap hardcopy edition and/or an easily accessible online version of this great dictionary?" - no, a pity, but I guess no. It will take decades to get there. "Patrons of learning do not fund dictionary publication." - but there is no work going on on a dictionary, so how do we know for sure?

Sources of Indo Aryan Lexicography is a great series, amazing work being done.

As per Mr. Pandurangi's question about the Nirnayasagar font. I do not have to work on it. Ulrich's font is a 1 to 1 replica of the bold Nirnaya sagar's font. It's unicode. It has more than 807 ligatures. Good kerning. It's a very fine work. Sanskrit 2003 is the new incarnation of Nirnayasagar, a very fine font, one of five best devanagari fonts for Sanskrit. So using noble words I say - Ulrich is the avatara of Nirnaysagar and a very exact incarnation. I don't blame Apte. I love him and work on a Russian edition of Apte's Composition. I blame his bad printers :) Yes, they did a huge amount of work, but used tools which are not the best for education purposes. But we could print it in a new edition. Can we? Or MSS first, dictionaries follow?

[Veeranarayana Pandurangi]

who is ulrich and where his devanagari is available? if it is available in web please let us know.

--
निराशीर्निर्ममो भूत्वा युध्यस्व विगतज्वरः।। (भ.गी.)
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--

Veeranarayana N.K. Pandurangi
Head, Dept of Darshanas,
Yoganandacharya Bhavan,
Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Samskrita University, Madau, post Bhankrota, Jaipur, 302026. India

अथ चेत्त्वमिमं धर्म्यं संग्रामं न करिष्यसि। ततः स्वधर्मं कीर्तिं च हित्वा पापमवाप्स्यसि।।

तस्मादुत्तिष्ठ कौन्तेय युद्धाय कृतनिश्चयः। निराशीर्निर्ममो भूत्वा युध्यस्व विगतज्वरः।। (भ.गी.)

http://jrrsanskrituniversity.ac.in/

http://jrrsanskrituniversity.ac.in/acd1.asp

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/bvparishat

[Mārcis Gasūns]

On Friday, 19 July 2013 09:29:11 UTC+4, Veeranarayana Pandurangi wrote:

who is ulrich

Ulrich Stiehl, Heidelberg (Germany)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Stiehl

 

and where his devanagari is available?

http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/sanskrit2003.zip

or

http://www.sanskritweb.net/itrans/sans2003.zip

 

if it is available in web 

For the last 14 years the font's design has not change much. Sanskrit 2003 has the same Nirnaya style as Sanskrit 99 had. And before it Sanskrit 98. So it's been around at least 15 years. A very good font, almost as good as my replicas. See the file attached for a list of ligatures.