Methods
of publishing Hindi on the Internet
How
text is published on web pages
The standard text on a web page uses fonts installed on the visitor's
computer. For pages published in English and most European languages Arial
and Times New Roman fonts are often used because they are standard fonts
supplied with Microsoft Windows for PCs and also with Apple Macintosh
computers. These fonts also support most European languages and the user
can set their browser to their own language. Pages published in other
languages such as Japanese or Russian use fonts supplied with the specific
language version of Windows or Mac operating system. If a web page is
designed using a font that is not installed on the reader's computer,
the browser will substitute another font in its place. For English this
means that the text will still be legible even if the layout has changed,
but foreign languages will often be displayed as an ilegible mess of Roman
characters because the required characters for that language are missing.
The situation for Hindi
Until very
recently Hindi has not been supported by either Microsoft or Apple for
inclusion as a language option of their operating systems, despite it
being the fifth most widely used language in the world. The recent release
of a Hindi version of Internet Explorer 5 only works in conjunction with
Windows 2000, using the Unicode font coding standard which excludes it
from the vast majority of Internet users at this time. Therefore other
methods have been employed by web publishers for displaying Hindi. Below
I describe the methods used for publishing Hindi on the Internet and provide
links to examples of each method on this site as well as links to other
sites in Hindi.
Displaying
Hindi as an image file
Top
This is perhaps the simplest solution for presenting Hindi script on a
web page. A section or page of typed or hand-written Hindi can be scanned
into an image processing program and made into an image file for the web.
The most popular image file format for this is .gif (graphical
image format) because the number of colours in the image can be reduced
to make the image file size smaller. An image of text could be reduced
to just two colours, black and white, but because the Hindi script is
quite intricate it may be better to use 16 colours so that the outlines
of the characters may be smoothed (a process known as anti-aliasing).
Here is an example of Hindi displayed in an image
file, and some links to pages that use this
method to publish Hindi on the web.
Limitations:
- A large amount of text would require a large image file or number of files which would make the page slow to load in the user's browser.
- Any alterations or updates to the text require a completely new revision to be produced, scanned, and made into an image file.
- Although links could be made by creating an image map around link words, the image would require more memory if these link words were to be in another colour.
- Image files of text generally offer poor reproduction in printed format so the user will not be able to make a good print out of the page.
Supplying
a font for the user to download Top
One way to ensure that a web page is displayed correctly is to allow
the user to download the required font. The page publisher can provide
the Hindi font file for download or a small program that will install
the font directly onto the user's computer. Once installed the page will
be displayed in the correct Hindi font whenever the user revisits the
page. With the font installed the time it takes for the browser to load
the text is the same as for any English based page. Here is an example
of a page using the font download method,
and some links to other pages that require a
font installation.
Limitations:
- Some Hindi fonts are available in the public domain and have been used by several web publishers, but because there is no common coding standard for Hindi fonts, it is possible that several fonts will be required to view various web pages published using this method.
- It can take several minutes for the user to download and install the required font
- Different versions of the font are required for both Apple Macintosh and PC platforms. There are currently no Hindi fonts compatible on both systems.
Font
embedding Top
This is currently the most popular method for publishing Hindi on the
Internet. A company called Bitstream made a program that allows any font
to be 'embedded' on a web page. It works by converting the text into a
graphical format which can be displayed using a 'font player', now a component
of the Netscape browser, but also available for Internet Explorer via
a download. Microsoft are currently working on a similar but incompatible
system named Weft. The majority of online Hindi newspapers and portals
use font embedding on their sites. Here is an example of a
page in Hindi using an embedded font, and some
links to other pages that use this method.
Limitations
- The font embedding system can be quirky, ie. some characters may be missed on conversion and there are occasionally variations between browsers.
- The Bitstream system is only directly supported by Netscape browsers on PCs and Macs, and IE 4 for PC only.
- A large amount of embedded text can take a while to be processed for viewing.