Wikner's new Devanagari announcement

[ucgadkw]

>Path: bcc.ac.uk!psinntp!uknet!psinntp!psinntp!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!newsfeed.internetmci.com!psgrain!iafrica.com!uct.ac.za!quince.nac.ac.za!nacdh4.nac.ac.za!wikner
>From: wikner at nacdh4.nac.ac.za (Charles Wikner)
>Newsgroups: comp.fonts
>Subject: ANNOUNCE: another Sanskrit font (metafont) on CTAN
>Date: 20 Mar 96 09:28:05 +0200
>Organization: National Accelerator Centre, South Africa
>Lines: 107
>Message-ID: <1996Mar20.092805 at nacdh4.nac.ac.za>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: nacdh4.nac.ac.za


After several years' experience with Velthuis' devanaagarii font,
an adventure to refine the font was started. This rapidly got out
of hand, and the result is a completely new font and pre-processor 
suitable for Sanskrit.

Some changes or additions compared to Velthuis' font are:

 o  i-hooks that connect to the consonant at the correct position.

 o  Accents (udaatta anudaatta svarita).

 o  Vedic anusvaara and jihvaamuuliiya/upadhmaaniiya.

 o  Crisper characters (to look good at poster size of 150mm/6-inches).

 o  A grayer font more in keeping with the weight of cmr: in fact, there 
    are three weights (feint medium bold) and two slopes (upright slant).

 o  Transliterated output in roman script with diacritics, using the 
    same encoding scheme as for producing devanaagarii.

 o  Technical transliterated output using four `cases', following the
    style of S.M.Katre in his translation of the A.s.taadhyaayii.

 o  Ligature disabling and other run-time options specified in a
    separate file rather than in the text source file.

Features of Velthuis' scheme that are NOT supported are:

 o  Hindi, Marathi and Indic languages other than Sanskrit.

 o  Dollar mode to switch in and out of devanaagarii.

 o  The \dnnum and \cmnum commands.

 o  Upper case encoding (because of transliteration requirements).

The font and supporting files are designed for use with LaTeX2e; it is 
a bitmap font (using Metafont) rather than PostScript (simply because 
I cannot afford the software tools for designing a PostScript font).

Indebtedness to the earlier work of Frans Velthuis and Dominik Wujastyk
is acknowledged: the overall structure and encoding scheme is very 
similar to theirs. 


The requisite files on CTAN in the language/sanskrit subdirectory 
(as of today on ftp.tex.ac.uk/pub/archive/language/sanskrit) are:

readme.txt   Brief announcement and installation notes.
skt.sty      Style file (LaTeX2e) for the skt-series fonts.
ot1skt.fd    Font descriptor file for the skt-series fonts.
skt.opt      Sample of run-time options file.
skt.c        Pre-processor source program in ANSI C.
sktdoc.skt   Source file of documentation and samples.
sktdoc.600ps Documentation and samples print file: PostScript at 600dpi.
sktdefs.mf   Common definitions of pens, macros, etc. for skt-series fonts.
sktchars.mf  Common character source file for skt-series fonts.
sktligs.mf   Ligature codes (in fact access codes for non-printing
                      ASCII code characters) for skt-series fonts.
skt8.mf      Metafont source file for skt font at 8pt upright.
skt9.mf      Metafont source file for skt font at 9pt upright.
skt10.mf     Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt upright.
sktb10.mf    Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt upright bold.
sktf10.mf    Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt upright feint.
skts10.mf    Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt slanted.
sktbs10.mf   Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt bold slant.
sktfs10.mf   Metafont source file for skt font at 10pt feint slant.
skt*.tfm     Eight .tfm files for above.

Charles Wikner
wikner at nacdh4.nac.ac.za
20 March 1996.

P.S.
For those wanting a preview, a PostScript (600dpi) print file (1.2 Mbyte)
of the documentation and samples file is available by anonymous ftp from
ftp.nacdh4.nac.ac.za/wikner/sktdoc.ps600.
Beware: there is a very thin piece of wire to South Africa, and it is 
stretched rather taut, so the best time to ftp would be Sunday morning
local time (GMT+2:00).

There are also encoded versions of the file:
sktdoc.ps600-zip     (192k) - remember to set TYPE to BINARY
sktdoc.ps600-zip-uue (265k)

P.P.S. If you don't already have them, you will need to get the style
files ifthen.sty and relsize.sty for LaTeX2e: these are used by skt.sty.


--------------------- BUG REPORT 20-MAR-1996 --------------------------

The format lists the bug symptom(s) and the fix(es), followed by the 
original source line(s) and new source line(s).

BUG00.01:  Documentation error: skt.opt
FIX00.01:  skt.opt line 27: g~m -> g.m
% 100 % Disable candrabindu-style Vedic anusvaara, use g~m-style.
% 100 % Disable candrabindu-style Vedic anusvaara, use g.m-style.

BUG00.02:  Documentation error: skt.opt
FIX00.02:  skt.opt line 32: #103 -> #104
      % When enabled, you should disable obey-lines (#103) or you may
      % When enabled, you should disable obey-lines (#104) or you may

----------------- END OF BUG REPORT 20-MAR-1996 -----------------------