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In article <212@titan.nmt.edu> john@titan.nmt.edu (John Shipman) writes:
>In article <4969@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>, martin@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
>(Johnny Martin) writes:
>> 
>> I am inquiring to the whereabouts of typesetting or wordprocessing
>> fonts for Tamil (a language of Southern India).
>
>I haven't seen it, but try to get a copy of Stanford Computer Science
>report STAN-CS-83-965, by Pijush K. Ghosh, entitled ``Type Design and
>Composition for Indian Languages.''  I think this publication pertains
>to the TeX/METAFONT environment, but I'm not sure.

Ghosh's report describes his experiments in using METAFONT78 (now
superceded) to create a Devanagari typeface.  This is the script of Hindi,
Marathi and some other North Indian languages, and is not used for Tamil.

For Tamil typeface design in METAFONT, here is an extract from my memo on
TeX fonts:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. TAMIL

2a Arthanari

Date of information: December 26, 1987

Contact:
   According to Emma Pease (network response on 10 November 1987 to my query in
   TeXhax 1987, issue 93) a basic set of Tamil characters for TeX was designed
   at Stanford by T. S. Arthanari created when he was at Stanford (May-July
   1985).  Emma has the source code but does not want to distribute it further
   without his knowledge.  His present address is

           Quality Informatics Labs, Ltd.
           312, P. M. G. Complex
           57, South Usman Rd.
           Madras, 600 017
           INDIA

   (Address gotten by Emma from the Stanford Computer Science Dept.)

   There are approximately 160 characters in several styles written in a pre-
   release version of the current Metafont. Emma has only tried producing
   characters for one style but had little difficulty in doing so (a few
   commands had changed).  They are rough but look fairly good.

   I (Dominik) am writing to Mr. Arthanari today to ascertain his intentions
   concerning his work, and especially to learn whether he is willing and able
   to allow the source code of his Tamil font to be distributed as public
   domain software.  (March 10, 1988: still no answer.)

2b Ramanujan

Date of information: Fri Jan 22 1988 (mail from Pierre MacKay)

The font:
   Ramanujan, a graduate student who worked at Washington two years ago,
   designed a Tamil font in METAFONT84 (I think).  According to Pierre MacKay,
   the problem with this, as with Ghosh's Devanagari, is that it was
   arbitrarily developed in a framework that bears no relation to the monotype-
   based character grid used for Computer Modern;  this is unfortunate, since
   it makes it almost unusable in a bilingual environment.  Moreover, it does
   not make much use of the macro capabilities of METAFONT, and although
   reasonably well designed, the programming could perhaps be improved.  MacKay
   says that the people at Washington are continuing to work on it.

Contact:
   Pierre MacKay,
   Phone: 206-543-6259; 545-2386.
   Net: MacKay@june.cs.washington.edu


2c Rengarajan

Date of information: March 11, 1988
   T. K. Rengarajan, a software engineer (Database Systems, Digital Equip.
   Corp.) mailed me on Fri, 5 Feb 88 and mentioned that he may do a METAFONT
   Tamil.

Contact:
   ranga%debit.DEC@decwrl.dec.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dominik

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