Unicode Fonts (open type or WOFF) which can display legacy fonts .pfb (walkman chanakya etc)

[karan gupta]

Hi,

I am a publisher, and i am facing some difficulties related to legacy fonts in hindi.

All new EPUBs (Standard format for EBOOKS) require the fonts to be either of open type or WOFF which is not the case for most Indian legacy fonts (list attached below).   

Since all backlisted content with Indian publishers is in these non-unicode format, it cannot be converted to the digital files. Generally font conversion can be done, but it leaves errors which are very difficult to identify.

I would like to ask for help in development/link of unicode fonts which can be used to read the legacy fonts by just replacing the font file in html documents (In my opinion if the font definition is identical then the errors would not come in). 

Please let me know if anyone can offer some advice in this regard.

Thanks,

Karan

[Shrivathsa B]

no list attached.

2013/12/5 karan gupta <karang...@gmail.com>

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "samskrita" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to samskrita+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sams...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/samskrita.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[eddie...@gmail.com]

Karan,

   WOFF is not any kind of font, legacy or otherwise.

A far as I can tell, it is simply a new(ish) data file compression format, specifically designed to compress web pages.

I quote from the official WOFF docs:  (search for WOFF)

"This document specifies a simple compressed file format for fonts, designed primarily for use on the Web and known as WOFF (Web Open Font Format).

Despite this name, WOFF should be regarded as a container format or "wrapper" for font data in already-existing formats rather than an actual font format in its own right."

If the data so wrapped, is already Unicode savvy, I would assume its ready to go.

But material, in legacy fonts (XDVNG, Times_CSX + etc. etc.) requires the recipient to have the exact same font manually installed on his machine. It would still be ready to go, but with quite a high probability of on-page garbage characters!

Legacy font conversion utilities.

To this end, many free software packages are available to use, on and off line, to make the conversion from old to new.

However, each legacy font has to be individually remapped to the UTF standard (UCS Transformation Format)

where USC = Universal Character Set

It's the Universal Character Set, that makes all things garbage free, readable to all men, anywhere.

Now, another however:  Legacy font conversion utilities are a mixed bag.

A while ago I wrote two-way conversions for my own use (using .NET C#), for the aforementioned, including one to automatically distinguish the one from the other and thus do such jobs in one go.

Now, these things are tricky, they can have their quirks (i.e. they can be buggy).

The so called professional packages, likewise, have their limitations, re. accents, ligatures, etc. (and bugs . . .).

I would therefore suggest that you gather a few recommendations from other publishers and evaluate them against your particular requirements

(the packages, not the publishers (:-)

As for how to WOOF the universalised product . . ..

   Taff Rivers

[karan gupta]

Hi Taff,

I guess i was not able to explain it properly. I'm trying to understand how to convert my Hindi language books (currently pagemaker/indesign files with fonts) into EPUBs.

Now i can either convert the whole thing to unicode using some converters, for which i'll have to start a fresh cycle of detailed proof reading (because they will always have errors) 

OR 

I can embedd the fonts in the EPUB so that the system picks them up by default. But under the EPUB 3 guidelines they will only support open type fonts or WOFF. So in this case i need the open type font which can be used to read my .pfb font based content.

I am attaching the font list, and i think i might have been wrong when i said legacy. I read a little more and these are type 1 fonts, but my problem remains the same.

FONTS	FONT TYPE
KrutiDev	ttf (no issue)
Walkman Chanakya	pfb
Chanakya	pfb
Shiva	pfb
Shiva medium	pfb
Akbar	pfb
Amatya	pfb
Madhvi	pfb
Pervina	pfb
Subak	ttf
Abhushan	pfb
Priya	pfb
SG	pfb
Kundli	ttf
AAAman	pfb

 

This problem is currently being faced by all Indian language publishers, for all their books which were published before Hindi Unicode came in. If such fonts can become available then the entire content in Hindi will be easily accessible in the EPUB format. 

[eddie...@gmail.com]

Karan,

 

   It is becoming apparent that the issue is that of converting Postscript fonts to TrueType fonts.

thus to move away from Adobe docs to WWW docs.

The magic words to use, to scout around in the web at large, would be something like "Postscript to TrueType font conversion utility for Hindi fonts".

Again, WOFF is simply about data compression principally to reduce downloading times - for slow/large file transfers.

Correction,

  for my  USC = Universal Character Set

  please  read  UCS = ...

[eddie...@gmail.com]

Karan,

   You might want to check this out:

    http://www.freefontconverter.com/

It's looks promising. And it includes WOOF as one of its many output formats.

It appears to be UK based. But, I have no idea of its accuracy.

   Taff Rivers

[Tarun Chd]

plz provide me the dowload link for AAAman font. 

[Taff Rivers]

Tarun,

  Please search Hindi forums for Hindi fonts in the required formats - pre-Unicode or otherwise.

And Adobe Photoshop are the people you should be posing your postscript questions to.

Hindi publisher workshops - for technical advice...
Websites that convert PSB files to EPUB format...

Regards,

  Taff Rivers
eddie...@gmail.com