Tikkana Fonts

îN{Ád{ h}=Z+â
(tikkana Fonts)

îN{Ád{ h}=Z+â (tikkana Fonts) are widely used on the internet for displaying telugu on web pages. These fonts can be embedded in web pages, removing the burden of downloading installing these fonts from the end user (See Font Embedding FAQ for details).

Demos

For a demo of web sites using embedded tikkana fonts, visit C p{¨|Z (eemaaTa) webzine and _²n¨u} (telusA) archives.

Composing in telugu with tikkana fonts

The easiest way to compose in telugu using tikkana fonts is through the web interface called m{=Q{p{ÞöN{ (raMgavallika). You do not need to download and install tikkana fonts to start composing with raMgavallika.

For information on other editors that compose telugu text using tikkana fonts, see World:Telugu:kaMpyUTarlu section of the Open Directory Project.

Licence

These fonts are available for free under the GNU General Public License.

Download Instructions

You can download the latest version of Tikkana fonts from /fonts/tkn12.zip This zip file contains TrueType as well Type 1 fonts for use on PC as well as Mac (untested on mac).

Installation Instructions for Windows 95/98/NT

Using WinZip (freely available from http://www.winzip.com), extract files from tkn12.zip into a temporary folder.
Click on Windows "Start" Menu, first choose "Settings" and then "Control Panel".
In the control panel, double click on "Fonts" to open the Fonts panel.
Now choose "Install New Font" in "File" Menu and choose the directory into which you have extracted tkn12.zip in the step above.
You should now see "Tikkana (True Type)" in the list of fonts. Select it and click OK.
You should now have tikkana fonts installed on your system.
To verify, open WORD/WordPad or any other editor and look to see if tikkana appears as one of the fonts that you can choose.

Installation Instructions for X Windows on UNIX

The installation instructions here are inspired by the following documents.

These instructions assume that your X installation has a Type 1 font rendering engine. Starting with X11 Release 6, Type 1 rendering engine is part of the base distribution. Previous to that, it was a contributed package. See XFree86 for more information.

Download tikkana.tar.gz
Unzip using
```
  gunzip tikkana.tar.gz
```
Untar using
```
  tar xvf tikkana.tar
```

Add the tikkana type1 directory to font path using

  xset fp+ $PWD/tikkana/type1
  xset fp rehash

Verify that tikkana fonts have indeed been picked up using

  xlsfonts | grep tikkana

You should see

  -tikkana-tikkana-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

Exit all browser windows and restart browser. Your tikkana fonts should now be working in browser.
You will need to redo steps 4, 5 and 6 everytime you reboot your machine (more accurately, everytime your X Server/X11 Font Server(xfs) is restarted). To make it persistent, you will need permissions to edit X configuration files.
If you are a novice, you can safely skip this step and redo the steps 4, 5 and 6 whenever tikkana fonts do not appear in your browser.
- If you have xfs: On Linux Mandrake 6.0, the xfs configuration file is /etc/X11/fs/config. Your system may have it at a different place. Add $WHERE_tikkana_IS/tikkana/type1 directory to the end of catalogue entry in this file. Replace $WHERE_tikkana_IS with the full path to the directory where tikkana/type1 is located. Don't forget to add a comma at the end of the previous filepath entry before you add this one.
- If you do not have xfs: You have to add an extra FontPath directive to XF86Config file. It can usually be found at /etc/X11/XF86Config. If its not there, try /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config or /usr/X11/lib/X11/XF86Config or something similar. One you have found it, edit it, look for the last FontPath directive, and add the following line after that
```
FontPath        "$WHERE_tikkana_IS/tikkana/type1"
```
  Replace $WHERE_tikkana_IS with the full path to the directory where tikkana/type1 is located.

To control the size of tikkana fonts appearing in netscape windows, in Edit/Preferences Dialog, momentarily change the Variable Width Font setting to tikkana, select size 0, allow scaling and give a value, say 18. Now tikkana fonts should appear in 18pt. Now, change back to your previous setting. Obviously, this is a workaround to netscape bug and you would have to repeat the procedure once per Netscape Session. On Linux, if u r using KDE, K File Manager(kfm) is also a web browser and tikkana appears great in there.

Using tikkana in `ghostview/ghostscript`

It is extremely easy to make tikkana work with


  ghostview/ghostscript.

Just set the environment variable GS_FONTPATH to $WHERE_tikkana_IS/tikkana/ghostscript before invoking these programs.

On sh/ksh/bash, do

  export GS_FONTPATH=$WHERE_tikkana_IS/tikkana/ghostscript

On csh

  setenv GS_FONTPATH $WHERE_tikkana_IS/tikkana/ghostscript

Replace $WHERE_tikkana_IS with the full path to the directory where tikkana/type1 is located.

Printing Tikkana fonts on UNIX

Print to a postscript file, set GS_FONTPATH as explained above and use


ghostview.

Most applications including netscape don't do a good job setting fonts in postscript. One way out is to use the wprint filter to fix the postscript produced by netscape browser before it goes to the printer. Another way out is to hack the ps file.

For netscape produced output, look for the line,

  
    /Times-Roman findfont

and replace it with

    /Tikkana findfont

Though you would now see tikkana text, any text in Times-Roman would also be displayed in tikkana :-(

If you can do a better job with your postscript expertise, please let me know.

Composition Charts

If you are a developing a program compose teleugu text in tikkana, please refer to tikkana composition charts.

Credits

Ûû îm{¨p{¨n N{¬Ïzr b¶úN}T}m¢ (SrI tirumala kRshNa dESikAcAry) originally developed these as f½_{d{ (pOtana) fonts.
As pOtana fonts didn't conform to ISO-8859-1 encoding, they could not be used on web pages. Ûû íp}ß\¢ m{p{¨^ (SrI juvvADi ramaNa ) made the necessary changes to conform with the standard encoding scheme and called them îN{Ád{ (Tikkana) 1.0 fonts.
Version 1.0 had some serious problems and has been summarily remade as 1.1 by T¾\{p{m{ze¦ Ûzeu}b{¨ (cODavarapu prasAdu) and íp}ß\¢ m{p{¨^ (juvvADi ramaNa). This version was also the first embeddable verison that allowed several web pages to deliver content in telugu without asking the user to install fonts.
Minor corrections by T¾\{p{m{ze¦ Ûzeu}b{¨ (Chodavarapu Prasad) produced the latest version, îN{Ád{ (Tikkana) 1.2.

Produced by Prasad A. Chodavarapu
Last updated on March 22,1999.