Recently I started writing blogs in Malayalam(my mother tongue).. I really enjoyed writing. Initially I had problems with the default keyboard provided byWindows.. So I decided to extend the keyboard.. Used the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and created a new keyboard that is used by the Supersoft-Web.. Using the Alt-Gr key I am able to get almost all the malayalam letters in a single keypress (of course, excluding Alt-Gr, Shift etc)..Now I enjoyed writing.. Evaluating its merit is not my job anyway.. But when I asked my friend to go through my blog, she told me that the only unicode Malayalam font in her system was Arial Unicode !!! The company policy doesnt allow to download anything !! So I thought of font embedding.. I posted a request for help in this regard.. But no one seemed interested.
I googled and knew about WEFT, installed it.. converted the popular AnjaliOldLipi (developed by Kevin) to eot format using WEFT allowing some of my websites and blogsites to use it..
Uploaded to my website..edited the template of my blogger blog..(wordpress.com doesnt allow to edit template, so I might switch to wordpress.org and host my blog elsewhere later) . I hard coded the font priorities to choose Rachana,AnjaliOldlipi,Kartika and then the AnjaliOldlipi(embedded) so that the persons with fonts installed will get the best display first.. Moreover Firefox doesnt support dynamic fonts… Any windows system will have an IE, so it works !!!
If anyone interested in a WEFT tutorial, there are lot of resources in the Microsoft website.. Still if I can be of any help, with pleasure, I welcome any queries !!
Technorati Tags: weft, font, embedding, malayalam, unicode
10 Comments
good effort man. but there is still a long road ahead.
Now I changed the font to Rachana_w01… The owners of the fonts, (AnjaliOldLipi and Rachana) please inform me if I have violated any of the license rules, or if you want me to take the font offline..This is/was an academic exercise.
Good work ! Congratulations
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“kaippalli is right, a long way to go; all the best
very good keep it up mone…..
very good keep it up
hi dear…
i am really thankful for the informations and am really in need of some kinda help from you, hope u would hel me..
i had several doubts in using the WEFT..
can i design a page with malayalam text and ( prefer MLkarthika) and embed the font using WEFT locally..??
am planning to upload my site later and i would not be able to upload my site as of now..
how can i embed the font locally??..
hope u are clear….
and am anxiously waiting for ur valuable querries….
thanks a lot..
S A N T H O S H
If you prefer ML-Karthika, please make sure that you have license to embed the font.
Also make sure you use a Unicode opentype version of the same.
It is because WEFT embedding is supported only on Internet Explorer among the popular browsers.
If you want to test the font locally, you can “host” it in your c: or so. WEFT , by default shows the path also.
But I wont advocate font embedding. I used it only to help someone who cannot/couldn’t install any malayalam fonts.
Its use should be very much limited, as it increases the page load time a little.
The tutorial link is given in the sidebar. It is now I realized that it was missing.
i want2 right malayal in my site ,can u please send me the malayalm font which can be embed with weft,which have all letters in malayam and also the direction to ember the font
I have used WEFT to embed ML revathi font,ML-karthika font but the problem in IE is the “kootaksharangal” is not showin properly in IE, but if the font is present in system no problem is shown in Mozilla,
What should i do the font must be of similar architecture of karthika oe revatgi so my client could write it dynamically, can u help me, kootaksharan is show by some symbols and other characters