ആര്‍ദ്രം : ഇങ്ങനെയിരിക്കും !

ആര്‍ദ്രം ഫോണ്ട് ഉപയോഗിച്ച് എഴുതിയ "മലയാളം" എന്ന പദത്തിന്റെ ചിത്രം ബ്ലോഗ്ഗ് ചെയുന്നു. അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളും ആശയങ്ങളും അറിയിക്കുക.

Ardram - Updates

The project font "Ardram" is a calligraphy based ornamental font following the standards of SMC [Swathadra Malayalam Computing] in the original scripting pattern. The purpose of the project is to create a Malayalam font in Unicode format which could be used as a font for making titles in posters, banners etc. Though there exist many font in Malayalam, the absence of an ornamental font which is based to original script pattern is an issue in Malayalam computing. The availability of such an ornamental font which suites as a title font for the fonts which follows the standards of SMC such as Rachana, Suruma etc will help the original script based computing to attain more publicity and usage. And Ardram is such an experiment.

As per the studies from my side along with suggestions from Hussian KH, who is the mentor of my project and a known font designer, an ornamental Malayalam font requires 514 basic malayalam glyphs, 32 special symbols and 10 indo-arabic digits. There is also a suggestion to make the English alphabets following the same style of calligraphy to be available with the font set which would make the usage of the font more simple. Hence English alphabets are considered as the secondary requirement of the font project as the aim of project is to create a Malayalam font. The Malayalam numeral glyphs are removed from the beta font set since the availability of the Malayalam numerals is not considered as a requirement in an ornamental font. Hence as per the survey the Ardram font beta will contain 556 glyphs. [514 Malayalam glyphs, 10 indo-arabic numerals, 32 special symbols].

Of the 514 glyphs for Malayalam basic font, 217 of them has to be designed uniquely for attaining quality calligraphy pattern where as the balance 297 can be created by modification and combination of the uniquely designed set. The 10 indo-arabic numbers and 26 special symbols are also to be designed uniquely.

The designing and conversion of design images to glyph of the basic 253 glyphs[217 designed glyphs, 26 special characters, 10 numerals] is on progress under the support of Ravi of Sangamithra, Kochi and pre-alpha version of the font containing 259 glyphs [217 designed glyphs, 32 special characters, 10 numerals] will be completed by the end of this month and the alpha font containing the whole 556 characters will be released by 20th of August. The beta will be released by 30th of August considering the suggestions that I receive from the alpha font which will result on the completion of my project that is submitted to Google Summer of Code.

The beta version will have a life cycles of 3 months and the ML_Ardram_SMC.OTF stable version will be released on Dec 1st considering the suggestions and ideas from the others under the GNU GPL V3 license, copyrighted to SMC, myself, Hussian KH and Ravi Sangamithra. The stable version will also contain the 62 English glyphs and hence the total number of glyphs in the stable release will be 608 [556 glyphs in beta and 52 English glyphs]. A "HOW TO for Malayalam ornamental font creation under SMC standard" which is suggested by Anivar on the last sprint will be published on FCI wiki by this time of stable release.

The project name : Ardram

Ardra - Its name of my mother's house. Hence I suggest the name ardram for the font which I am doing.I checked with all the known names, most of them exist - the one balance was hiranyam (name of my home).It was my mother who suggested this name as the better one. Still I am confused weather to make the name ardra or ardram. Well, let next font (if I could) be named hiranyam!

The time shedule

This follows the time shedule which I suggested on the Google SoC application.

The time which I plans for the work is of 3 months that is 90 days. The plan suggest the way of completing the task with in 80 days and one day is kept as reserve for each set of 8 days and hence this schedule takes a duration of 90 days to complete this project.

Day 1 to 15 : Task #1 : Discussion with artist and font designers. The idea of font will be discussed with them and sketches of the glyphs will be made.
Day 16 to 25 : Task #2 : The basic glyphs will be designed using the calligraphies available in SVG format using inkscape.
Day 26 to 40 : Task #3 : The glyphs will be created using the Fontforge tool. The pre - alpha version of font is thus created.
Day 41 to 50 : Task #4 : Testing of the font. The readability and clarity of the font on different size on the screen and while printing will be checked and bugs will be noted.
Day 51 to 60 : Task #5 : The issues tracked on the task #4 will be solved. The alpha version of the font will be created by the end of Task #5.
Day 61 to 70 : Task #6 :Discussion with font designers artist etc on the font and collecting the issues raised by them
Day 71 to 80 : Task #7 :The bugs and issues found on the font will be solved and the beta version will be released to the public as the result of task #7

The first stable version of the font will be released only after another 3 months from the beta release only by which more issues and problems of the font can be rectified.

The day 1 is May 1st :)

Thus it starts

This blog is the one made to write about my works on the font designing project for the Swathandra Malayalam Computing, which is supported by the Google as in the form of Summer of Code 2007. This blog will contain my experiements, ideas, efforts and hacks based on this font designing.