Guess what this mystery character is used for ?

Today I came across an interesting blog post related to a mystery character. The character in question is the one shown below.

Fig: Picture of the mystery character.

Let's see what effect this mystery character has when it is cut and pasted in different text fields....

Fig: Firefox address bar

Fig: Pasted inside Gimp

As you can see, after this character is pasted, all the succeeding text is typed backwards from right to left. Really strange.

The closest valid explanation that was made was the following comment made by Charlie Halpern in the afore mentioned blog. And I quote ...

As noted about, the backwards type comes from the other characters, not from the circle of commas. The circle of commas (҉) is the Unicode character U+0489 COMBINING CYRILLIC MILLIONS SIGN. It actually is supposed to combine with the character before it, surrounding it with them crazy commas. It is a historic character that isn’t much in current use. See this pdf document for more details.

Note: For this unique magic to work, the program into which you paste this symbol should support unicode. For example, pasting this symbol in an 8-bit Ascii software such as Windows Notepad or Internet Explorer will display a series of gibberish.

Metric equivalent of Microsoft fonts for Linux

Visit any random website and chances are the website expects your machine to have a set of fonts which have become the de-facto standard on the Internet. The fonts being Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and so on. While it may not be illegal to install these fonts on a Linux machine, they are propritery and are owned by Microsoft. And Microsoft does not licence third parties to redistribute these fonts - a reason why you don't find these commonly used popular fonts installed in Linux by default.

This is going to change once and for all. Red Hat in association with Ascender Corp has developed a set of fonts which are the metric equivalent of the most popular Microsoft fonts, and they have released it under the GPL+exception license. Three sets of fonts have been released, them being:

1. Sans - a substitute for Arial, Albany, Helvetica, Nimbus Sans L, and Bitstream Vera Sans
2. Serif - a substitute for Times New Roman, Thorndale, Nimbus Roman, and Bitstream Vera Serif and
3. Mono - a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, Courier, Nimbus Mono L, and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
   

The advantage for Linux users is that now you don't have to explicitly install Microsoft fonts anymore as the web sites or documents which use Microsoft fonts will display flawlessly using the metric equivalent fonts which can be included in all Linux distributions by default.

The work on the fonts is yet to be completed and so will be released in two stages. In the first stage, all the fonts are released as fully usable but will lack the full hinting capability provided by True Type/Free Type technology. In the second phase of the release which will happen some time in later half of 2007, the fonts will have full hinting capability and will be at par with or excel the Microsoft fonts in quality. For now Red Hat has made available all the fonts for download so that you can test it on your machine.

Creating good quality fonts - ie. fonts which retain its quality even in smaller sizes is a very tedious and time consuming process. And buying good quality fonts is a very costly affair with each set of fonts costing anything upwards of $100 . By taking the initiative to develop good quality fonts which are the metric equivalent of Microsoft fonts, and releasing them under a Free licence, Red Hat has done a very good deed for the Free Software and Open Source cause.

Tip to properly render and read Indian language websites in GNU/Linux

Yahoo India has been on a drive to localize its web content. The result being a series of portals in a multitude of Indian languages which includes Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Gujarati and so on. And it has made it easier for the visitors to view the website in the Indian language of their choice by using the web address format as follows - which is :

http://in.yourlanguage.yahoo.com/

Suppose your mother tongue is Tamil, you can view the Yahoo India web page content in Tamil by typing the address 'http://in.tamil.yahoo.com/'. Cool isn't it ?

Fig: This is how the website rendered before Indic fonts were installed

But while viewing the website rendered in the Indian languages, I was not able to read the content as the relevant Indian fonts were missing on my machine. After some search, I found that there is a package containing a variety of Indian language fonts available for Linux. They are popularly known as Indic fonts.

Fig: Website after indic fonts were installed

If you are using a Debian based Linux distribution, you can easily install the fonts via the command :

# apt-get install ttf-indic-fonts

which will install all the Indian language fonts on your machine. And once they are installed, it will be possible to view and read the Yahoo India websites in your regional language.

Fig: Yahoo webpage rendered in Malayalam

Fig: The same web page rendered in Hindi

You can even copy and paste pieces of text from the website to a text editor provided the text editor has been compiled with Unicode support.

15 tips to choose a good text type

When you use good fonts in articles either in print or in screen, it always makes a positive impression on the reader. Good fonts motivate a person to read the article from start to finish. Many times I have come across books - especially scientific journals which have a very small type face - so small that you end up squinting your eyes to read the text. In those circumstances, even if the article in question holds my interest, I usually pass it by or at the most just skim through the headings. Now a days most books that are printed have a good type face and the publishers have realized the advantages of using scientifically designed fonts to enhance the reading experience.

But selecting a good text type is not just imperative for printing, it holds equal importance in publishing articles for the web. Till a few years back, the font rendering in Linux was below par and the result was that viewing web pages was atmost lackluster. But now a days, rendering fonts in Linux has been significantly improved with support for anti-aliasing and sub pixel hinting that it has turned into a very good experience.

In a previous post titled "Optimal use of fonts in GNU/Linux", I had mentioned about all the facets related to fonts and how one can optimally use fonts in Linux. Now Juan Pablo De Gregorio blogs about the characteristics of good fonts and what fonts are good in a particular situation which makes an interesting read.