Regularising the glyphs

[ohbendy]

The glyphs in the existing font have some irregularities that will probably not give the most ideal effect especially if we're thinking of people using the font on mobile devices where pixel anomalies will stand out. There are several things I'd propose, we might not want to regularise all of these:

• letter heights can be normalised. This will definitely improve the overall appearance because if some letters are bigger or smaller their rendering on the pixel grid will mean extra pixels for some letters. Likewise the vowels above and below can be the same size and be aligned consistently.
• stroke weights can be consistent. Again this will help the appearance because otherwise some letters will appear darker than others.
• spacing can be even. Currently the sidebearings are all different, so the rhythm of the letters is patchy.
• curves are rather bumpy at present. I'm not sure whether that's intentional or how much to smooth things, but I've had a stab at simplifying and balancing the curves.

By following those steps, we can achieve a much tidier look. Thinking we don't want a completely typographic treatment, I purposely left some of the inconsistencies (the blobs are not all the same size, and the feet of -u and -aa are different for example).

The Sa is now symmetrical, and I've matched the wraparound of the Ra to the medial Ra. But I can go back to the earlier forms if you feel those are more appropriate.

Here are the vowels with the same treatment:

And with the alignment zones so you can see how I visualised the vertical positions:

[StephenMorey]

Wonderful work Ben. Would you be happy for me to share the comparison of the original with your improvements on Facebook and see how people respond to it?

[ohbendy]

Thanks Stephen! Absolutely feel free to share wherever you think we might get good feedback.

Would you mind if I invite a couple of others to collaborate here on Github? There are a couple of people who might be able to advise.

[ohbendy]

Re medialYa and medialRa, I wasn't quite sure whether to align them with the subscript consonant or with the subscript vowels. They could be stretched to the same height as the longer ones, or somewhere in between.

[ohbendy]

Closing this thread now, I think all comments have been integrated by now. Any further suggestions can be in a new thread.