OT: Unicode - Bengali

From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Wed Apr 17 2002 - 14:31:43 EDT


At 01:22 4/17/2002, * Ranju * wrote:

>You may at best say, that is closer to LinoType. But mind it, Bangladesh
>is an independant country and Bengali is our official language. So our
>govt. is only the authority for (Bangladeshi) Bengali related issue, not
>LinoType. Recently I talked to our Bangla Academy the national govt.
>authority of Bengali regarding this issue. They are very much interested
>of that matter and agree to fight with LinoType by law for un-authorized
>copyright(??) of Bengali.

You seem to be confusing the copyright of a particular typeface design --
designed by Tim Holloway and Fiona Ross at Linotype-Paul in the 1970s, the
history of which is very well documented -- with the absurd notion of
copyrighting a script. Linotype Bengali is a typeface: a particular
rendition of the Bengali script, just as Times New Roman is a particular
rendition of the Latin script. The fact that Times New Roman is the
intellectual property of particular companies does not mean that these
companies are claiming ownership of the Latin alphabet.

In the 1970s, Linotype-Paul developed an entirely new Bengali typeface --
Linotype Bengali -- at the request of the publishers of Ananda Bazar
Patrika. The design was not directly modelled on any of the previous hot
metal Bengali types from Linotype or other companies, but was informed by
analysis of Bengali manuscripts in the India Office collection at the
British Library (an analysis made by Fiona Ross and Bengali consultants
from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London). The new design
was drawn by Tim Holloway, and it is justly celebrated as one of the great
original achievements of non-Latin type design.

At the time, Fiona's team received feedback from some Bengali readers that
the new design was 'too old fashioned', that they wanted something more
'modern'. But the new Linotype Bengali typeface quickly became very popular
and, with its popularity, it also became the most pirated typeface in the
Linotype collection. An unfortunate situation arose with the decline of
proprietary typesetting systems and the development of device independent
font formats such as PS Type 1 and TrueType: the Linotype Indic fonts were
not adapted by Linotype to the new technology. There are various reasons
for this: changes in the ownership and corporate structure of Linotype, and
also an unwillingness to invest heavily in fonts that were targets of
uncontrolled piracy in other countries. This resulted in legitimate
Linotype versions of the typeface being unavailable for the new technology,
which prompted Bengali developers to make PS and TT versions from the
pirated fonts.

This history has resulted in a peculiar situation in which, due to its
immense popularity and thirty year association with publishing in
Bangladesh -- in both legitimate and pirated versions -- the Linotype
Bengali typeface design has come to be seen as the generic form of typeset
Bengali. At the same time, many of the people who read text set in this
design every day, and even the latest generation of Bengali font
developers, seem wholly ignorant of the origin of this design.

I think a number of things are unfortunate about this. It is unfortunate
that Linotype did not develop its own digital versions of Linotype Bengali
for the latest font formats (it is now doing so, developing Unicode
OpenType fonts in collaboration with Mike Meir in London, who provides
fonts for the large Bengali immigrant community in Britain). It is
unfortunate that publishers and other font users in Bangladesh have had to
resort to aesthetically inferior copies -- and copies of copies, and copies
of copies of copies -- of the Linotype Bengali design. It is unfortunate
that Tim Holloway's contribution to Bengali typography is largely unknown
in Bangladesh, and that his brilliant and original design is treated as
somehow generic. Finally, it is unfortunate that Bengali font developers
continue to copy this design, rather than exploring the rich potential for
new designs that is inherent in their beautiful script.

John Hudson

Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com

A dinner invitation, once accepted, is a sacred obligation.
If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor
must attend.
                               - Ward McAllister



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