213213 - Udayavani (Indian (Kannada) news site) doesn't render fonts correctly

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 52746

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Other, defect)

Description

[Karthik Sheka]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030628
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030628

The Udayavani web site (an indian news site in the Kannada language) doesn't
render the fonts appropriately.  IE6 on the same WinXP system renders it fine,
so it's not a matter of fonts installed on the system.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to website
2. No joy

Actual Results:  
Fonts render as garbage

Expected Results:  
Fonts whould render as Kannada text (as is done by IE6).

Comment 1

[H P Nadig]

Hi there,

  This is *not* a Firefox bug. Internet Explorer has something called EOT - font embedding (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/default.aspx). The reason why you can read it fine on IE 6.0. 

  For Firefox, just download the font from Udayavani website (http://199.74.239.15/udayavani/fonts/SHREE850.ttf) and install it on your machine to view the website. 

Comment 2

[Gérard Talbot]

That webpage is badly coded in a number of ways. Regarding fonts, the page declares a windows-1252 character set instead of utf-8 where and when Firefox users with a true unicode font assigned to utf-8 would still be able to read, to view the page in Kannada as intended even if they had not support for 
Shree-Kan-0850.ttf or SHREEKA0.eot (MS-WEFT) or Shree-Kan-0850.pfr

Comment 3

[Gérard Talbot]

The provided URL has changed. Declaring an .eot file is bug 52746. Resolving as such.

Comment 4

[H P Nadig]

The page doesn't have utf-8 text. The font isn't an OTF either. Firefox users with a true Unicode font won't be able to read the text. 

The site URL is http://68.178.224.54/udayavani/home.asp (!). Somehow they seem to prefer IP to the domain, although the news paper in print is very popular in our state. 

Comment 5

[Gérard Talbot]

> The page doesn't have utf-8 text. 

That's right it does not and that's the number 1 major problem with the page.

The page declares
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
and, as you can see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252
there is no Kannada glyphs at all, no Kannada glyphs referenced whatsoever in windows-1252. So, the page does not degrade gracefully for font-capable of rendering Kannada language. And that's one major problem with the page.

Kannada's unicode range is
U+0C80 – U+0CFF   (3200–3327)
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u0c80
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada#Unicode
and so, it should at the very least declare a character set that comprise that range. If there is none specifically assigned for that unicode range, then the only reasonable and rational thing left to do is to use utf-8. Otherwise the safe, sound and normal thing to do is to declare utf-8 as the character set so that people assigning a true unicode font for utf-8 character set would have been able to read that page. None of this is actually done in that
http://68.178.224.54/udayavani/home.asp 
page. Even if a Mozilla-based browser user would download and install a Kannada-capable font
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts_windows.html#kannada
, he still would not be able to see, read the page as intended, that is with true Kannada glyphs, because the character set as declared is not for the Kannada unicode U+0C80 – U+0CFF  (3200–3327) range. So, that webpage developer is not doing things right to begin with.

> The font isn't an OTF either. Firefox users
> with a true Unicode font won't be able to read the text. 
Of course Firefox users won't. That's because, among other reasons, the web developer mistakenly assumed that people only use MSIE 6+.
If you're developing a webpage written in Kannada, the very least thing you ought to do, that you should do, is to encode characters in utf-8 to begin with. There is no dedicated iso-charset available for Kannada:
http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/#Slide0030
And then if you want to propose a font for Kannada, that is, capable of rendering Kannada characters (non-romanized), and possibly a dynamic one with .eot, then, at the very least, it would be to use one that is a *_true Unicode_* encoded font like:
Akshar Unicode, Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, JanaKannada, Kedage, Mallige, Sampige, Saraswati5 or Tunga.

Comment 6

[Gérard Talbot]

Ok. I tested furthermore all this. I downloaded the font
http://199.74.239.15/udayavani/fonts/SHREE850.ttf
and installed it. True Type Font property extension reports for "Supported Unicode ranges: Information not available in font"
So to verify, I loaded MS-WordPad, then chose for font Shree-Kan-0850 and then the charset select (then dynamically modified) offers only the "Western" charset. So, Shree-Kan-0850 (SHREE850.ttf) is not an Unicode-based font.

When I try SIL viewGlyph (version 1.77.0), the reported positions for the Shree-Kan-0850 font are from 0 to 217. So, every glyph positions is coded within the 0000 - 00FF (0000–0255) range and not from 0C80 – U+0CFF (3200–3327).

Comment 7

[H P Nadig]

(In reply to comment #6)
> So to verify, I loaded MS-WordPad, then chose for font Shree-Kan-0850 and then
> the charset select (then dynamically modified) offers only the "Western"
> charset. So, Shree-Kan-0850 (SHREE850.ttf) is not an Unicode-based font.
> 
> When I try SIL viewGlyph (version 1.77.0), the reported positions for the
> Shree-Kan-0850 font are from 0 to 217. So, every glyph positions is coded
> within the 0000 - 00FF (0000–0255) range and not from 0C80 – U+0CFF
> (3200–3327).

True. They're using a custom encoding. Shree-Kan-0850 is not a Unicode font. And it is also true that the web page developer is not doing things right to begin with. 

But many popular news papers in this region of Asia have been using fonts like these since they have been using the same for preparing news for the print. They're yet to make a move to Unicode due to missing support for these languages on publishing software and some Unicode related issues on M$'s Operating Systems. 

(In reply to comment #5)
> And then if you want to propose a font for Kannada, that is, capable of
> rendering Kannada characters (non-romanized), and possibly a dynamic one with
> .eot, then, at the very least, it would be to use one that is a *_true
> Unicode_* encoded font like:
> Akshar Unicode, Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, JanaKannada, Kedage, Mallige,
> Sampige, Saraswati5 or Tunga.

So, does Firefox support dynamic fonts if a Unicode font is used? 

Comment 8

[Gérard Talbot]

> missing support for these
> languages on publishing software and some Unicode related issues on 
> M$'s Operating Systems. 

Tunga is available with Windows XP and it renders all Kannada glyphs as far as I can see; Arial Unicode MS does not seem to render all Kannada glyphs ... but I could be wrong on this.

So, the correct (accessibility-wise) way to create those documents was
1- first encode the webpage with utf-8
2- in the stylesheet, offer Tunga as a first choice of font and then other true Unicode font capable of rendering Kannada glyphs. Something like
body {font-family: Tunga, Mallige, Kedage, Code2000, sans-serif;}
I installed and checked each of these fonts for Kannada glyphs being in the correct range 0C80 – U+0CFF (3200–3327).
3- offer links to download and to install Kannada-capable font, like Tunga, the first proposed Kannada-capable font
4- create an .eot file with Tunga, and definitely not with Shree-Kan-0850 font (SHREE850.ttf)

The logic here is graceful degradation: to maximize chances of proper, correct rendering on the user screen and to not rely on MS-WEFT and IE6+. Users, in their security settings, can disable font download in IE6+ making .eot useless.

> does Firefox support dynamic fonts if a Unicode font is used?
No. Firefox does not support dynamic fonts, even if an Unicode font is used and regardless of type of font used. That's why I resolved this bug as a duplicate of bug 52746.

But Firefox users who have Tunga installed or any true Unicode capable of rendering Kannada glyphs could be able to view any Kannada-written website: that's the error with that news website. I already had Tunga installed and I had Code2000 installed and I don't even speak/read/write/understand Kannada.

Comment 9

[H P Nadig]

(In reply to comment #8)
> 
> Tunga is available with Windows XP and it renders all Kannada glyphs as far as
> I can see; Arial Unicode MS does not seem to render all Kannada glyphs ... but
> I could be wrong on this.

No, Tunga.ttf has bugs. 
http://www.baraha.com/web_docs/unicode_issues.htm

> 3- offer links to download and to install Kannada-capable font, like Tunga, the
> first proposed Kannada-capable font

M$ license doesn't probably allow distribution of Tunga font. 

Comment 10

[Gérard Talbot]

> No, Tunga.ttf has bugs. 
> http://www.baraha.com/web_docs/unicode_issues.htm

I went to that page and wanted to test other True Unicode font capable of rendering Kannada but the page just uses .gif images and
http://www.baraha.com/style/baraha.css
does not propose any Kannada-capable fonts.

I downloaded and installed Akshar Unicode, Mallige, Kedage: all these 3 fonts are true Unicode fonts and - please correct me if I'm wrong - are *recommendable* free Kannada-capable fonts to use.

> M$ license doesn't probably allow distribution of Tunga font. 

Okay. Let's forget about M$ then... 

Akshar Unicode may be the most/best recommendable one since 
- it covers several east Asian languages (Kannada, Sinhalese, Devanagari, Malayalam, Tamil, Tegulu) and other unicode ranges: Latin1, Latin1 supplement, Latin Extended A, Ponctuation, Signs, Geometric shapes, etc
- it renders 1935 glyphs
- it's free
- © 2005 Kamban Software,  Australia. All rights reserved. Akshar Unicode is specifically designed to be distributed with Prakruti Editor. 
http://www.kamban.com.au/