[Student-projects] Web interface for FontCompare and Harfbuzz rendering tests.

Mon Mar 17 09:36:59 PDT 2014

Currently it uses good fonts as standards and compare them, with the font
being developed using the methods provided by the fontforge python
extension. The GPOS/GSUB is a bit vague at the moment, relying heavily on
the fontforge scripting extension, however other features like bearing,
stroke width, kerning, underline position, bold/itlaics weight is pretty
much well defined, using the methods provided by the scripting extension
provided by the fontforge application. As Santhosh told, that the web
interface is already built, so I am now focussing on improving the
fontCompare part, and the methods that it uses for achieving the same.

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 9:58 PM, Rajeesh K Nambiar <
rajeeshknambiar at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 3:03 PM, Mayank Jha <mayank25080562 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Standard set of parameters, refer to, Glyph Consistency, GPOS/GSUB
> > completeness, Appropriate bearing, Kerning , Weight in Bold, Italic and
> > Underline, Sentence similarity etc. These set of standards are currently
> > nothing but a set of paramters extracted from well known beautiful font,
> say
> > Lohit.ttf for Devanagri script. The exact details are given here.
>
> Read the document, but it lacks details. How is GPOS/GSUB completeness
> measured? Same goes with Bearing, Kerning also. Can you share more
> details?
>
> >
> > The need for a web interface is inevitable because a standalone testing
> > tool, does not give you real user feedbacks. This tool however would
> > integrate the user feedback as a metadata in the database which would be
> > used as information to test upon the aesthetics since it is a matter of
> both
> > subjective (user feedback) and objective (set of standards) concern.
> >
> > Yes Currently the tool, supports only Devanagari script, which I know
> very
> > well. Adding support for other scripts requires consultation with font
> > experts of other languages, so I could not add those.
> >
> > This web tool aims at being two-way medium between font users and font
> > developers unlike anything we have currently.
> >
> > However I did not get what you tried to say when you said "values
> provided
> > by the tool is trivial and obvious.".
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Santhosh Thottingal
> > <santhosh.thottingal at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Mayank,
> >>
> >>
> >>> Short Description:
> >>> I am wanting 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.
> >>
> >>
> >> Could you please give more details about "standard set of parameters?".
> >> How it is collected? How much confidence we can have on those
> parameters?
> >> What is the script coverage?
> >>
> >>>
> >>> It uses the python scripting extension of fontforge. However it
> currently
> >>> it has very basic features implemented. I plan to add in advanced
> tests, and
> >>> also building a web interface for the same.
> >>
> >>
> >> Why you need a web interface if it works as fontforge plugin and also as
> >> standalone python application?
> >> If it is available as fontforge plugin, that is the best way to use it -
> >> close to the font developer tool.
> >>
> >>>
> >>> 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
> >>> behind 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!
> >>
> >>
> >> Depends on the answer to my first question :)
> >> I tried the application with multiple fonts and I get 0 as the score for
> >> Meera font. I Imagine Malayalam is not supported. I tried Lohit Bengali
> and
> >> some other fonts too. I get the following error
> >>
> >>  Traceback (most recent call last):
> >>   File "fontcompare", line 72, in BeginTest
> >>     self.TestFromFont()
> >>   File "fontcompare", line 174, in TestFromFont
> >>     score = gc.glyph_round_consistency(fontA, self.GetScript(),100)
> >>   File "/tmp/FontCompare/fc/GlyphConsistency.py", line 109, in
> >> glyph_round_consistency
> >>     return (set_round_score/float(total))*10
> >> ZeroDivisionError: float division by zero
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> Traceback (most recent call last):
> >>   File "fontcompare", line 72, in BeginTest
> >>     self.TestFromFont()
> >>   File "fontcompare", line 214, in TestFromFont
> >>     self.highresScoreBar.setValue(round(score/10))
> >> TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'NoneType' and 'int'
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Synopsis:
> >>> The web interface would be having two main parts, one is the User
> >>> feedback area, and the other being the Font Developers testing area.
> The
> >>> interface would thus serve dual purpose, of conveying the feedback of
> the
> >>> font users to the font devs, and a testing platform for the font
> developers
> >>> to test out their fonts based on the set of standard tests performed
> by the
> >>> FontCompare application based on set of standards.
> >>
> >>
> >> So is this is going to be a web page where users can download, try some
> >> sample text with varying size, bold, italic variants etc? Something like
> >> google webfonts interface?
> >>
> >> Whether font developers prefer a web application for measuring the
> >> aesthetic parameters again depends on my answer to first question.
>  Talking
> >> about aesthetic parameters, being it a mix of subjective and measurable
> >> variables,  I would say the parameters are hardly match my expectations
> >> about a language I know relatively well - Malayalam. If a user is font
> >> designer with basic design knowledge, the values provided by the tool is
> >> trivial and obvious. The choice of some measures - like
> LBearing/RBearing,
> >> ascent/descent rations etc are very crucial and it is an informed
> choice by
> >> font developers.
> >>
> >> (I am not discouraging you here, but I am trying to set the expectations
> >> right and if possible try to help you to improve your ideas further.)
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Implementation Details:
> >>> I would be using Django as the web framework, for making the web
> >>> interface alongwith JS/jQuery/BootstrapCSS for styling purpose.
> >>>
> >>> User feedback region:
> >>> This would allow the user to test out new fonts of any language with
> his
> >>> custom text. Since this would be difficult to do realtime, so we have
> to
> >>> render the text in the said font on the server side and then push it
> on the
> >>> client, this can be easily done with any fontrendering tool. Preferably
> >>> harfbuzz,
> >>
> >>
> >> There are lot of websites that does this using CSS3 webfont technology.
> >> There is even a bookmarklet tool that allows you to drag a font to any
> site
> >> and see that site with that font.(
> http://somadesign.ca/projects/fontfriend/)
> >>
> >> Silpa project plans to provide a webfont interface to choose indic fonts
> >> based on similar user experience. The old silpa application had this
> >> interface.
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >> Santhosh
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Rajeesh
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>

-- 
Mayank Jha
http://mjnovice.wordpress.com/
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