<div dir="ltr"><div>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 <a href="https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/pycontrib/FontCompare/DOC.txt">here</a>. <br>
<br></div><div>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. <br>
</div><div><br></div><div>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.<br>
<br></div><div>This web tool aims at being two-way medium between font users and font developers unlike anything we have currently.<br><br></div><div>However I did not get what you tried to say when you said "values provided by the tool is trivial and obvious.". <br>
<br></div><div>Cheers!<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Santhosh Thottingal <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:santhosh.thottingal@gmail.com" target="_blank">santhosh.thottingal@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi Mayank,<div class=""><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div><div><b>Short Description:</b><br>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.</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>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?</div>
<div class="">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div> 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.<br>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Why you need a web interface if it works as fontforge plugin and also as standalone python application?</div><div>If it is available as fontforge plugin, that is the best way to use it - close to the font developer tool.</div>
<div class="">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>
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!<br>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Depends on the answer to my first question :)</div><div>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</div>
<div><br></div><div> Traceback (most recent call last):</div><div> File "fontcompare", line 72, in BeginTest</div><div> self.TestFromFont()</div><div> File "fontcompare", line 174, in TestFromFont</div>
<div> score = gc.glyph_round_consistency(fontA, self.GetScript(),100)</div><div> File "/tmp/FontCompare/fc/GlyphConsistency.py", line 109, in glyph_round_consistency</div><div> return (set_round_score/float(total))*10</div>
<div>ZeroDivisionError: float division by zero</div><div><br></div><div>and</div><div><br></div><div><div>Traceback (most recent call last):</div><div> File "fontcompare", line 72, in BeginTest</div><div> self.TestFromFont()</div>
<div> File "fontcompare", line 214, in TestFromFont</div><div> self.highresScoreBar.setValue(round(score/10))</div><div>TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'NoneType' and 'int'</div>
</div><div class=""><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>
<br><b>Synopsis:</b><br>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.</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>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?</div>
<div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>(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.)</div><div class=""><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div><div><b><br>
<br>Implementation Details:</b><br>I would be using Django as the web framework, for making the web interface alongwith JS/jQuery/BootstrapCSS for styling purpose.<br> <br>User feedback region:<br>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, <br>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>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.(<a href="http://somadesign.ca/projects/fontfriend/" target="_blank">http://somadesign.ca/projects/fontfriend/</a>)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Silpa project plans to provide a webfont interface to choose indic fonts based on similar user experience. The old silpa application had this interface.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div>
Santhosh</div>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div></div></div>
</blockquote>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Mayank Jha<br><a href="http://mjnovice.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">http://mjnovice.wordpress.com/</a><br></div>
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