FontCompare

To implement a tool for improving the aesthetic quality of fonts of Indic scripts

Project Abstract

There are a lot of fonts for Roman scripts but when it comes to fonts for Indic scripts like Devanagari, Bengali, Telugu, there is a dearth of good quality Open Type fonts. This tool would facilitate in providing tests enabling Font developers to contribute more to Open Type Indic fonts.

This project is part of Google Summer of Code 2013.

Student Name: Mayank Jha

Mentor: Shreyank Gupta

Melange URL: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2013/mjnovice/42001

How to Install and Run the application:

A) Installation

1. Change into the folder containing the source. 

2. As this is a fontforge utility so to be able to use it you need to
	install the fontforge bindings for python onto your system.
	
	Run the required command on the terminal as given below
	
	For Debian based Linux distros:

		sudo apt-get install python-fontforge
	
	For Redhat based Linux distros:

		yum install fontforge-python

You also need to install PyQt4 separately, as currently the setuptools
does not support automatic detection and installation of Python bindings
for Qt.

The commands for the installation:
	
           For Debian based Linux distros:

                    sudo apt-get install python-qt4

            For Redhat based Linux distros:

                    yum install pyqt4

3. Run "sudo python setup.py install" from the shell prompt, supply the 
    password if prompted for.

B) Running From the shell prompt, type in "fontcompare" and you would be able to run and use the application.

C) How to Use: The very basic feature of Font Compare is to compare two fonts based on their glyphs, bearing, size and many other factors.

Basic Usage Steps:
i) Click on "Load Test font" button , which would load the font to be
   tested.

ii) Now click on the "Begin Test!" button to run the various tests.

You can see that the detailed glyph wise test results can be viewed 
in the lower right corner, whereas categorised scored based on the
degree of similarity can be seen graphically in the upper part of the 
GUI.

This branch of FontCompare compares the fonts, with a preset values
of standards and bitmaps, implemented using the concept of mockfonts.

NOTE:: Support for the user to be able to generate these mockfonts as 
standards at will, would be added soon. The reason I chose to create
mockfonts, is that it would prevent the need for the user to download 
standard fonts separately, as it was used to be done in the master 
branch, although it does occupy a bit more memory but works smoother.