[Student-projects] Web Interface for FontCompare

[Vasudev Kamath]

Hi Mayank,

Mayank Jha <mayank25080562 at gmail.com> writes:

> Hello All,
> I was planning to make a web interface for a font aesthetics analyzer
> for Indic scripts, FontCompare. FontCompare is a plugin for fontforge,
> which provides assistance to the font developers in assessing the
> aesthetics of a font, based on the standard set of parameters and
> their values. It uses the python scripting extension of fontforge. It
> was developed by me, as a part of Google Summer of Code 2013, under
> the mentoring organization Ankur India.

Interesting tool.

>
> Implementation Details:
> I plan to make a full fleged web interface, in Django which would be
> an online service where font developers can test their fonts, and also
> users can give feedbacks. So, overall it would be a two way portal,
> wherein font developers get a chance to hear from the ones who are
> using their fonts, and also roll out new fonts for people to use and
> see.
>
> Font User feedback:-
> The user would be given a chance to use the font, by typing the fonts
> on a WSYWIG styled editor, and give their remarks about the fonts.
> These remarks would be conveyed to the font developers, and acted upon
> if found worthwhile.

Yes this can be helpful for font developers.

>
> Font Developers testing Arena:-
> Here font developers can upload their fonts and they would be shown
> the results of the aesthetic analysis, done by fontcompare script.
> Results such as Glyph consistency, GPOS/GSUB completeness, similarity
> etc. are conveyed in form of scores, to the developer.

Here I would like to add some ideas from my side. We had a Gsoc project
last year to created automated render testing tool for Fonts [1]. It
would be great if you can add support for this tool too in the Developer
testing arena. The tool will use harfbuzz and uses test data to test the
font rendering and generates output with information which doesn't
render properly. Tool isn't fontforge related but I think can be good
for integrating with web interface.

What do you think? 

[1] https://github.com/smc/Automated-Rendering-Testing

>
> In general it would be a real help, and it would eliminate the dearth
> of good quality open type fonts for Indic scripts, which was the main
> motive of developing FontCompare. By making a web interface this would
> indirectly propel the creation, of good quality stylish fonts for
> Indic scripts, which is limited to 2-3 per language as of now!
> Would love to have someone mentor this project with me as the
> student.

I can take up the Python part, though I've not used Django and for Font
part I think Santhosh can mentor. Santhosh what do you think?

@all mentors do share your view also :-)

Cheers
-- 
Vasudev Kamath
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