[Student-projects] Web Interface for FontCompare

[Rajeesh K Nambiar]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Mayank Jha <mayank25080562 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the review,
> I would love to have support for the automated rendering tool, in this web
> interface.
> FontCompare does use harfbuzz for text rendering for a font, so I do not
> think there will be any difficulty in doing that. FontForge on the other
> hand uses Pango as their rendering engine.

Pango in turn uses harfbuzz for shaping.

>I am well versed with the tests
> for rendering which harfbuzz has to offer, which is the reason I omitted it
> from my aesthetic analyzer.
> I have been using django for quite a while now, so that would not be a
> problem :) . Would love to see this happening!
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 8:48 PM, Vasudev Kamath <kamathvasudev at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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.

I'm no designer, so I would like to hear comments from font designers on this.

>>
>> 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.
>>

Would be good to have the rendering testing integrated in the web
application. This was in last year's plan as optional feature.

>> 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
>> http://copyninja.info
>> Connect on ~friendica: copyninja at samsargika.copyninja.info
>> IRC nick: copyninja | vasudev {irc.oftc.net | irc.freenode.net}
>> GPG Key: C517 C25D E408 759D 98A4  C96B 6C8F 74AE 8770 0B7E
>
>




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