Problem with Malayalam font rendering in Feisty fawn

I use Ubuntu 7.04 without any additional packages.
The result I get is
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/9938/screenshotfi0.png
which looks fine to me. Can you verify?

The page http://njaan.blogspot.com/ has some issues (click to view source). You will notice that the Malayalam text is shown with NCRs. This does not affect the result, though it shows that the posts are messy.

Ubuntu 7.04 comes with Malayalam support using the FreeSans/FreeSerif fonts. To verify that AnjaliOldLipi was installed properly, check in Applications/Accessories/Character Map. Find the section on Malayalam and right-click on the characters. This will show from which font they come from.

@Simos Xenitellis

Well, the rendering in your system too is not perfect and is the same as mine.

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/7590/untitledha4.png --> shows the perfect rendering of Malayalam, as in IE7, Windows XP SP2....

The font is installed perfectly in my Ubuntu installation as from the Character Map.

And I tried to solve the problem to an extent, using the information from this site (blog) ---> http://linux-n-malayalam.blogspot.com/2006/11/610.html , 5th comment from the last rather than the post solved my problem and the comment is as follows,

COMMENT START>>>>>>>>>>>
.........Regarding my previous comment the issue was that pango was disabled in firefox. That was fixed by adding the following line to /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0

Now I have upgraded to fiesty fawn and everything seems to be working fine except typing in malayalam..........

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<COMMENT END

But still the rendering is not as perfect as in Windows.... this is the screen shot of 'improved rendering' in my firefox , http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/2199/screenshotgn4.png

And I still need an answer....

Indeed MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 lets Pango take over and do the rendering of the glyphs for Indic languages.
I managed to reproduce
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/2199/screenshotgn4.png

I cannot compare between the IE and Firefox/Linux rendering. Can you set the same font and take a screenshot?

The Pango library is responsible for rendering Indic scripts.
There have been some recent work on the Indic engine in Pango, which should be available in Ubuntu 7.10,
http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/pango/trunk/ChangeLog?view=markup

I do not know if you have a background in programming; the Pango website is at http://www.pango.org/

@Simos Xenitellis

YOU: I cannot compare between the IE and Firefox/Linux rendering. Can you set the same font and take a screenshot?

Reply: The font used in both cases are same, AnjaliOldLipi.ttf. One is from IE/Windows and other from Firefox/Linux.

=========

YOU: I do not know if you have a background in programming; the Pango website is at http://www.pango.org/

Reply: I dont have any background in programming. But giving step by step instrutions MAY help

=====================

Well since we have found out the problem behind the poor rendering of Malayalm fonts...... can you suggest the solution, a detailed solution?

Let's sort one issue first.

Could you please check if http://kaithiri.blogspot.com/ shows well on your Ubuntu with AnjaliOldLipi? The http://njaan.blogspot.com/ has messed up Malayalam text which may cause rendering problems.

Please post a screenshot with AnjaliOldLipi, on Windows, then Ubuntu.

The font used is anjalioldlipi in both(all) the cases

========== http://njaan.blogspot.com/ =========
http://njaan.blogspot.com/ in Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2 :- http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/5899/njaanwindowsieanjalioldzn3.png

http://njaan.blogspot.com/ in Firefox, Ubuntu Feisty Fawn :- http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/6967/njaanubuntufirefoxanjaljx0.png

===============END=================

The font used in anjalioldlipi in both(all) the cases

===========http://kaithiri.blogspot.com ========
http://kaithiri.blogspot.com/ in Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2 :- http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4669/kaithiriwindowsieanjaliuo9.png

http://kaithiri.blogspot.com/ in Firefox, Windows XP SP2 :- http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/130/kaithiriubuntufirefoxanwr5.png

================END=================

In both the cases the Malayalam rendering is NOT perfect. The screenshots of IE/Windows shows the perfect rendering.

As far as I know, the AnjaliOldLipi is not hinted, meaning that in smaller sizes the font does not look well.
In the Firefox screenshots in Ubuntu, the font is slightly smaller. You can increase the size in the Ubuntu version to see if there is any change.

In addition, if you compare the title of the post between

===========http://kaithiri.blogspot.com ========
http://kaithiri.blogspot.com/ in Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2 :- http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4669/kaithiriwindowsieanjaliuo9.png

http://kaithiri.blogspot.com/ in Firefox, Windows XP SP2 :- http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/130/kaithiriubuntufirefoxanwr5.png

================END=================

you will notice that, for example, the vowel I has a different style between the two screenshots. No matter what optimisations the rendering module does, I do not think that it can affect the style in such a way. In the Windows screenshot, this vowel has the same width all the way. However, in Linux, this vowel has variable width (fatter at the vertical line, slimmer at the end). These cannot be from the same font.

simos & പ്രതീഷ് പ്രകാശ്

The issues here is due to the errors in pango Rendering for malayalam. Install patched pango from http://suruma.sarovar.org
Another reason is Malayalam font specification by Microsoft is created a lot of unwanted problems. ( microsoft is changed this in vista) see suruma patch Fixes this and work with fonts not accepting above standard. see <http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B0_%E0%B4%AE%E0%B4%B2%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B3%E0%B4%82_%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%AE%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%82%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D/%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%AE%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%82%E0%B4%97%E0%B5%8B%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%82_%E0%B4%9A%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%B2_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B4%82%E0%B4%B6%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%99%E0%B4%B3%E0%B5%81%E0%B4%82> for details. Swathanthra Malayalam Computing is trying to push this patch upstream

Also there is a lot of Malayalam softwares by swathanthra malayalam computing available at https://savannah.nongnu.org/project/smc
Documentations are at http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/SMC

Anivar