[smc-discuss] SMC Malayalam fonts new release candidate and call for participation to update Fonts

[Rajeesh K Nambiar]

Dears,

<tl;dr> version: Release candidates of new font versions available for testing.
                 Call for pariticipation if you are interested to learn Font
and rendering related technologies - we'll teach you!

New Font versions
=================
Yesterday we tagged release candidates for new versions of Malayalam
fonts. Some of
you community members have already been using them, testing and
reporting issues.
They are in a shape for wider use now. This is a call for testing the
new versions and
report any issues before we do the final release in 2 weeks, during
12th year of SMC
celebrations.

2 versions are available:
5.1:     This version of fonts has seen a wide array of enhancements,
updates and
         bugfixes for all the fonts. This version supports only the v1
mlym opentype
         specifications and will go into maintenance mode from now on.
This is the
         recommended version for all those who are stuck at old
rendering engines
         such as old pango, Qt, especially ICU (old versions of
{Open,Libre}Office,
         XeTeX), Windows XP etc.
6.0:     This version is updated to have support for both v1 (mlym)
and v2 (mlm2)
         opentype specification - at the moment only for Rachana and
Meera fonts.
         This version works on old-pango, Qt, Windows XP, Harbuzz and Uniscribe
         (Windows 7, Windows 8). ICU layout engine is *not* supported and users
         depending on that (old Open/LibreOffice, old XeTeX et al) are
out of luck.
         All new enhancements and development effort will go into this
version, I'll
         merge the 'mlm2' branch into 'master' once we do the final
release. This is
         the recommended version for all new users.

Please go forth, use these new fonts and report any issues you perceive.
Download links[¹] [²] are provided at the end of this email.


Update other Fonts and Learn How to - we offer help too!
========================================================
Meera and Rachana fonts have seen most updates and rest of the fonts
(Anjali, Dyuthi,
Kalyani, Suruma, RaghuMalayalam) need to be updated for all new shiny
features. This
is a great opportunity for community members to get involved and add
features, fix
bugs and update the fonts. Never done before or don't know how to do
it? Santhosh and
I are willing to take online sessions to show you how to. We need more
contributors
and we encourage anyone interested to get their hands dirty.
Let us know if you are interested - send a one line reply to this
thread and we'll
see how best to arrange these sessions.

Download links
===========
[¹] 5.1 version:
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/smc/fonts/malayalam-fonts-5.1/
[²] 6.0 version:
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/smc/fonts/malayalam-fonts-6.0/

-- 
Cheers,
Rajeesh
http://rajeeshknambiar.wordpress.com