
The New Wave of Indian Type - carbolite103
https://design.google/library/new-wave-indian-type-design/
======
nkoren
> The language and script change every five hundred miles

Huh, somebody is making a vast over-simplification, presumably in a well-
intentioned attempt to package this in a way the Western mind can comprehend.
Which frankly is futile. India is _much_ more diverse than that.

In my youth I spent some time bumming around Saurashtra, a region in Gujarat
state that's about 150 miles square. Nearly 50 languages are indigenous to
that one region alone. Not dialects. Languages. It's wonderful, but nuts.

That was almost 20 years ago; no doubt it's more homogenous now, which is sad
to think about. A century ago nearly 80 languages were spoken there, so
linguistic diversity has been declining fast. Any effort to preserve it
deserves applause.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to
communication?

I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking
now). The information suddenly marketable to or directly consumable by anyone
at any given place will significantly increase.

~~~
vvillena
The moment that happens, that language would start diverging again. You have
to unify culture in order to unify language, and that doesn't sound as good
anymore.

Settling on a "common" or "business" language, though, is entirely possible,
and has been done many times in history. No language ever encompassed the
whole world, and if one language has it's English, right now. Latin, Arabic,
Mandarin, French, English, Spanish... The world has seen its share of common
languages used within certain spheres of influence.

~~~
mantas
Point in case - proto Indo European language. It's clear most of European
languages (except pre-Indo-European, like Finnish, Estonian, Basque..) have
common parent language. For example, look at numbers. All those languages have
awfully familiar numbers. If you speak one language, you can recognise most
numbers in other languages rather easily. Yet they evolved into very different
languages in different regions.

~~~
murukesh_s
I think numbering system is a recent introduction to European languages -
adopted from India in 10th century or so.. but some other words have
similarity like maatha- mother, pithaa- father etc!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system)

~~~
yorwba
The written numerals are relatively recent, but the words for numbers are much
older and still very similar across languages.

~~~
murukesh_s
Wasn't Roman numerals in use, before the Indo-Arabic came to Europe? How come
they are similar? They look worlds apart to me..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals)

~~~
kgwgk
These are the _words_ the Romans used:

unus duo tres quattor quinque six septem octo novem decem ...

~~~
murukesh_s
Yes you are right.. indeed sounds similar..

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henrikeh
This made me think of Metafont[1] which D. Knuth developed in conjunction with
TeX. The idea was to do font-design by drawing with a virtual brush -- but
with perfectly smooth curves and a build-in constraint solver. The end result
is that the entire Computer Modern family is parameterized (and generated on-
demand) as TeX is using it. As an example, the serif, sans-serif and
typewriter fonts are the same Metafont program, but just with different
parameters.

Looking at the repo for these Indian fonts you can see that they use FontLab
Studio[2] for the work. Browsing the homepage reveals how complicated and
involved font crafting is -- let alone the design!

[1] Metafont:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafont](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafont)

[2] FontLab Studio: [https://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-
studio/](https://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-studio/)

~~~
svat
Some Indic typefaces were created using METAFONT in fact, in the 80s and 90s.
They used the abilities of METAFONT to provide multiple specific fonts. Some
of them have features (variants for conjunct style, e.g. the “Bombay” versus
“Calcutta” styles for Devanagari, etc.) that are still not present in any
modern (TrueType/OpenType) font available today.

------
i2om3r
I always wondered why many non-Latin (mostly cursive) scripts have little
variation across different typefaces. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?
Well, the article mentions a similar observation by a Sri Lankan typographer,
so I guess I am not alone. Can someone maybe point me to other non-Latin
typefaces that have "their own typographic style"? I found the Baloo samples
(last one in the article) refreshing. The style of the Tamil and Devanagari
samples is very close to the Latin sample. For the Mina samples (first figure
in the article), I can see that they try to capture the character of the Exo
Latin typeface, with certain strokes getting narrower towards the end and its
superelliptic curves (are there typographic terms for these?). I am not used
to reading Bengali, but the style of the sample looks like it is in a font
that has a different weight.

~~~
duskwuff
> Can someone maybe point me to other non-Latin typefaces that have "their own
> typographic style"?

CJK scripts have traditionally used Ming, Song, and Gothic (sans-serif)
typefaces.

~~~
i2om3r
I guess what I mean is styles besides gothic (undecorated strokes of even
thickness) and those that mimic traditional calligraphy. I see a lot of other
forms for Latin scripts, but for Arabic, CJK and Indian scripts most typefaces
fall into the above two categories. I might be wrong though, maybe I am just
not exposed to a lot of variety. I do find it most notable in mixed script
printed text, e.g., Arabic, where the predominant form seems to be Naskh,
which looks like calligraphy, and Latin, which typically doesn't look like
calligraphy at all. This mix creates an image that looks very uneven to me,
similar to when people use too many different typefaces in Latin text.
Actually, I am not even sure whether the typographic style is dictated by
Naskh, or whether its just the form of writing.

------
sg0
I admit that despite of the ubiquity of Indian fonts these days, I still use
English to write messages conveying Bengali/Hindi words, because I'm more
comfortable that way. I don't remember the last time I wrote a letter in
Bengali/Bangla or Hindi, and when it comes to electronic communication, it has
always been English for me. So it feels strange for me to start writing in
Bengali using my keypad all of a sudden.

~~~
elSidCampeador
और क्या हाल है भाई? If you're using an Apple device, you could try using a
transliteration keyboard. Type in English, the word is printed in Hindi (I
dunno if they have a transliteration keyboard for Bengali)

~~~
fludlight
Is there a difference in the minimum font size that you find comfortable
reading between latin and non-latin alphabets?

~~~
elSidCampeador
Oh yes absolutely. Right now I see font size 9 and I'm fine with it for the
latin alphabets. For the non-latin ones, I'd prefer 11. Maybe that's just a
problem with the hindi font I have right now on my Firefox (Mukta Devanagiri),
in fact I downloaded that font after reading the post in the link.

------
manojlds
Nice to see lot of Tamil love in there.

~~~
guruparan18
Tamil has the largest users in internet[1]. It does enjoy the highest
adoption.

1\.
[https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/04/Indi...](https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/04/Indian-
languages-Defining-Indias-Internet.pdf)

~~~
manojlds
To clarify - That's % of population that has adopted, not the largest number
of users.

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telotortium
This is the first time I've ever seen this construction (using "that's"
instead of "whose" as a relative possessive pronoun): "...the ongoing use of
English, a language that's reach and influence has grown considerably..."

~~~
Stratoscope
That's not very typical. (Pun intended, and John Clarke reference intended
too.)

It was just a mistake. Given the topic, it's possible that that was written by
someone who's not a native speaker - but whose writing is otherwise very good.
(And arguably better than _that_ showoff sentence!)

As you noted, a native American English speaker would write "...a language
whose reach..." And that's that.

RIP John Clarke:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)

~~~
megaman22
Contractions in vernacular American English are such a shitshow and getting
worse all the time, that I'm not sure any guardians of proper usage can stand
against the tide.

------
neelkadia
Really impressive! Following Ek Type and ITF since so long and happy to see
great things are coming out on Indian scale.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Based on what friends from South India tell me, it looks like South India in
particular is embracing English. Even poor people are sending their children
to schools where they can learn English. Most of the people I know, when they
text on a phone use the Latin alphabet. India has fully embraced the global
system which is based on English. I would guess that within 20 years, more
people will speak English on a regular basis than Hindi.

~~~
Epenthesis
Part of that is South India tends to be assertively anti-Hindi for various
historical/cultural reasons. Given that, English is the only realistic option
for communicating outside a given linguistic community.

~~~
kamaal
>>Part of that is South India tends to be assertively anti-Hindi for various
historical/cultural reasons.

We are pro-OurLanguage, whatever that language. If that feels anti-Hindi to
you, one can't help.

You almost are suggesting to be pro-YourLanguage one has to throw out their
their language.

~~~
arrayjumper
There are also a few anti-OtherLanguage protests.

For example, this is hardly "pro-OurLanguage" \-
[http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/karnataka-
raks...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/karnataka-rakshana-
vedike-held-for-protesting-at-namma-metro-stations/article19312895.ece)

~~~
kamaal
That is pro-OurLanguage protest.

Also, as long as there is English, its totally useless to learn Hindi.

~~~
arrayjumper
How is that a pro-OurLanguage protest? The board already had Kannada and
English. In addition, Hindi was being added. That is clearly an anti-Hindi
protest. Not a pro-Kannada protest.

~~~
kamaal
I will take your comment seriously when Kannada shows up on Delhi metro
signage and no body protests, until then its shoving things down peoples
throat and holding them responsible for not swallowing up.

------
Abishek_Muthian
Language is the life of art & literature, much of the Indian subcontinent's
culture has huge emphasis on that. So, this actually is a huge deal in
preserving it for posterity.

------
wufufufu
Alright, this is cool. I was annoyed at the last Google India campaign article
about how everyone was going to use voice-to-text.

------
sarabande
Speaking of Asian fonts, does anyone know of CJK character sets that can be
loaded via CDN à la Google Fonts -- for example, Google's Noto CJK Simplified
Chinese fonts?

~~~
rspeer
The unfortunate problem is that any one of these fonts increases the amount of
data your page has to load by 8 megabytes.

I don't think there's a good solution to CJK web fonts yet. If one existed, I
think it would need to involve a font rendering technology where character
shapes can be generated from strokes and radicals, instead of the literal
shape of every character having to appear separately in the font.

~~~
Something1234
Why can't font files be compressed, as that would just be using a dictionary
which I believe that GZip already does.

~~~
Tomte
They are compressed.

Do you perchance mean "dynamically loaded, on demand"? Because there's no
standard for it. Because – as usual – "good enough for Western audiences".

~~~
bfred_it
That sounds like an attack on westerners. Obviously westerners develop ideas
for westerners _first_ ; That’s what they understand and that’s what they
need. The lack of solutions for the billions of users of a writing system
should not be the fault of the people who don’t use it. Sure they can do
better, but they don’t deserve that tone.

~~~
jonathanyc
I fail to see how the tone in your comment is at all appropriate for the
comment you are responding to. You seem overly sensitive on this issue.

------
hmhrex
Side note: I didn't know Google had their own TLD. Is this new? Seems weird
that an organization has that ability to do that.

~~~
ehsankia
They've added it for over 3 years now, you can read more about it here:
[https://icannwiki.org/.google](https://icannwiki.org/.google)

blog.google is used pretty often.

~~~
bennettfeely
Waiting for google.google to become a thing

~~~
scrollaway
[https://com.google](https://com.google) :)

------
intended
People very strongly underestimate the impact on the net once many people who
were hitherto disconnected, finally come online.

Provided they realize there is a greater web beyond facebook and the various
trap gardens.

~~~
dugluak
how is this related to the topic and not down voted?

~~~
sp332
It's in the first sentence of the article.

