African and Open Source

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye September 17th 2008

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 1 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African fonts and Open Source This talk is about: ● African Orthographies (relevance, groups, requirements) ● Technologies for them (, OpenType) ● Implementation ● Raise awareness and interest ● Case for Open Source

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 2 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Speaker Denis Moyogo Jacquerye ● Computer Scientist and Linguist ● Africanization consultant ● DejaVu Fonts co-leader ● African Network for Localization (ANLoc)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 3 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye ANLoc African fonts work part of ANLoc project ● Facilitate localization ● Empowering through ICT ● Network of experts ● Sub-projects: Locales, Keyboards, Fonts, Spell checkers, Terminology, Training, Localization software, Policy.

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 4 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African languages

● Lots of African languages (over 2000) ● 25 spoken by about half ● 80% don' have orthographies ● 20% do! ● Can emulate!

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 5 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African languages

● Used every day by most ● Education is mostly in European language ● Used in spoken media ● Interest is rising

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 6 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Why African language support? Relevance ● Local language encourage development ● Standardized texts ● Better education ● Better press ● Better information management ● Better access to information

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 7 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Why African language support? Problems of African languages ● Small market at the moment but 675 million people ● Africa has a yearly 5% economical growth ● No clear general documentation but some standardization ● Hard to implement, complex needs, by region

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 8 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Why African language support? Current primary users ● Academics ● Education ● Press, publishing, dictionaries ● One day, the mass

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 9 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African Writing systems

● Latin (more than 90% of the languages) ● Arabic script ● Ethiopic ● Tifinagh ● Nko ● Vai ● Kikakui, Bamum, Mandombe

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 10 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African Orthographies Basic Latin ● Swahili ● Zulu ● Shona ● Somali ● Oromo ● etc.

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 11 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African Orthographies Some use “special” characters ● Hausa (40M) ● Fula (25M) ● Kanuri (4M) ● Bambara and other Manding languages ● Akan (19M) ● etc.

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 12 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye African Orthographies Some use complex orthographies ● Yoruba (25M)

● Lingala (25M) Combining ● Dinka (3M) Stacking

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 13 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Once upon a time

● Manually on page ● 8bit encoded fonts ● Limited font for each language group ● Document not shareable without similar font

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 14 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Unicode

● Basic support everywhere is now common ● Prefers decomposition [ɛ]+[ ]́ instead of [ɛ́] ● Normalization still a major issue [] + [ ]́ vs [é] ● Platforms or applications behave differently

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 15 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye OpenType Positioning of diacritics ● Mark to Base ● Mark to mark ● Mono fonts

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 16 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye OpenType Substitutions (GSUB) ● Local variants (florin, Eng, Esh, with , script a, and v with a hook) ● Contextual forms (soft i, soft , ligatures)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 17 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Focus on OpenType Mark to Base (GPOS) ● For non precomposed forms: special vowels with accents ● For precomposed characters followed by diacritics ● For all diacritics

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 18 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Focus on OpenType Mark to Mark (GPOS) ● For diacritics stacking ● Needed for tonal languages using diacritics in various ways

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 19 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Focus on OpenType Locale variant ● with hook (florin) in Ewe ● Eng in all African languages ● Small for ɠ in Seereer Currently missing OpenType language tag ● Small with bar in Sudanese languages ● Capital with tail in Sudanese languages

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 20 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Focus on OpenType Mono fonts ● Diacritics are zero-width ● Mono width for all characters ● Conflict in definition ● Use GPOS mark feature to remove width

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 21 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Editing scriptable ● AFDKO (mark handling to come) ● TTComp GUI ● Volt Both: ● Fontforge

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 22 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Support

● , good support with latest – problem with older version ● Mac, great since OpenType support ● , decent support with latest Gtk/ ● Java, uses ICU, good stuff

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 23 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Support

● Basic OpenType ● Complex OpenType ● Advanced OpenType ● Graphite ● AAT

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 24 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Solutions When data is missing from fonts ● Fallback is necessary but ugly ● Shapers auto positioning ● Shapers normalization

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 25 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Required

● Variations of basic ● Variations from Greek script ● Latin letter with hook or tail ● Latin letter with diacritics ● Combining diacritics

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 26 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design 16 variations of Latin or IPA (ex: Manding Languages, Bambara 3M in West Africa, Lingala 10M in Central Africa)

ɑⱭǝƎœŒɔƆʌɅ ʒƷʕʔɂɁ

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 27 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● Simply rotated

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 28 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● Latin alpha/script a needs locale variant for Nufi ● Alternatively use Greek alpha

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 29 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design 11 with Greek design (Manding languages 10M,Fula in West Africa 15M, Lingala 10M in Central Africa)

ɛƐɣƔɩƖʊƱʋƲƩ

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 30 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye From Greek

● Sometimes different from Greek ones

● Too similar with other letters

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 31 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design 31 with hook or tail (ex: Hausa 25M, Fula 25M, Seereer 1M)

ɓƁƈƇɖƊɗƒƑɠƓɦƙƘ ɲƝŋŊƥƤɽⱤʃƭƬʈƮ ⱳⱲƴƳ

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 32 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● F with hook vs. regular F (Ewe 3M in Ghana and Togo)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 33 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● Eng (Fula 15M, Manding languages)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 34 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● G with hook like script g (Seereer 1M in Senegal) ● with hook is better with small hook (Seereer)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 35 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design 10 with bar/stroke (Hausa 25M, Kanuri 4M, languages in Western and Central Africa)

đĐƉɨƗɍɌøØʉɄ

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 36 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Design

● 126 precomposed accented characters (all across Africa)

ÀàÁáÂâÄäĀāĂăǍǎẠạẬậḄḅĆćČčḌḍḎḏḒḓ ÈèÉéÊêËëĒēẸẹỆệȨȩǦǧḤḥÌìÍíÎîÏïĨĩǏǐỊịḶḷḼḽ ÑñṄṅṆṇṊṋÒòÓóÔôÖöŌōỌọỘộṔṕŠšṢṣ ŤťṬṭṮṯṰṱÜüŨũŪūŰűỤụŴŵẀẁẂẃẅỲỳẒẓ

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 37 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Combining Diacritics 15 combining diacritics (Igbo 30M, Yoruba 25M, Lingala 10M, Malagasy 20M, tonal languages)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 38 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Soft-dotted i For combination with ● Lowercase i (and j) used ı (and ȷ ) ● Barred i, i.e. ɨ , add uni0268.dotless ● Feature calt

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 39 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Marks to base Above base letter ● Feature mark ● Don't forget precomposed characters (e.g. ẹ in Yoruba)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 40 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Marks to base Below base letter ● Feature mark ● Don't forget precomposed characters (e.g. é in Yoruba)

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 41 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Marks to base on base letter ● Feature mark or liga ● Don’t forget soft-dotted I ● Own shape as could be preferred

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 42 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Mark to mark Stacking diacritics ● Feature mkmk

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 43 Diacritics

● Make sure they align properly ● Generate precomposed from anchors data

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 44 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Case for Open Source Adequate Open Source licenses exist ● OpenFont License by SIL ● fonts license ● Aladdin Ghoscript fonts license ● GNU Public license with font exception ● Creative Commons

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 45 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Case for Open Source Having Open Source fonts: ● Let’ community do the work you don’t have time to do ● Encourages feedback ● Larger test base ● Faster production cycle

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 46 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Open Source fonts Open Source African fonts ● Charis SIL and Doulos SIL ● ● DejaVu fonts ● (in progress) ● (in progress) ● Others

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 47 African fonts and Open Source Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Thank you!

http://www.africanlocalisation.net/

ATypI ‘o8 Conference St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2008 48