Using typewriters is an extremely bad idea. Typewriters made by Remington where (please excuse me when I say this) *retarded* (atleast for Malayalam).
In Malayalam, typewriter glyphs are really hated. They are illegible, and totally unacceptable for *any* kind of text. Typewriters in Malayalam were always a hack. You should understand some things: each glyph on the typewriter may be highly tuned and whatever for legibility, but even barely readable text requires far more glyphs than what was available on the typewriter. There is a lot of history, usability and understanding of language/script use behind this, which I can elaborate to interested readers. In any case, as a technical solution, I would very strongly recommend against a "Typewriter" like console. Regards, Rajeev J Sebastian ----- Original Message ---- From: Rich Felker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, November 2, 2006 11:07:19 PM Subject: Re: Proposed fix for Malayalam (& other Indic?) chars and wcwidth On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 01:34:14PM +0600, Christopher Fynn wrote: > Yes, Indic scripts like Malayalam need specific console fonts. I think > for console applications legibility is more important that beauty. > > Why not use the typefaces used in old-fashioned Indian typewriters as a > starting point? Most of the popular mono-with fonts for Latin (Courier > etc.) are based on typewriter faces. > > Manual mechanical typewriters had a fixed advance width and the > "resolution" was fairly low - a lot of care and expertise went into > designing typefaces that were legible within these constraints. Thanks for the constructive ideas. Of course you're totally right, this approach makes sense. There is still the character/glyph issue with regard to width, since typewriters of course work with glyphs rather than characters, but that's unavoidable. > I know typewriters made by companies like Remington were manufactured > for most Indian scripts - and I suspect a lot of these machines are > still around - so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with some type > samples to use as a starting point. Yes, I'm sure they are. I suppose now I just have to find someone who has one and who can explain it well. Rich -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/ -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
