todo

Still to do as of 26-APR-1997:

BUGS: (will be repaired as soon as possible)

Preprocessor

*   Latest version of mm still gives compilation problems on MS-DOS machines

*   Patc has some memory leaks


Tex Macros:

*   TeX sometimes seems to break in between \hboxes, which are used to build
    characters. This causes unwanted word breaks, no satisfying
    solution found yet. (I think about letting the pre-processor place
    discretionary hyphens between syllables)

*   When building up characters from parts, rounding errors in the DVI
    driver cause parts to be shifted one pixel to the left or right
    occasionally, this looks ugly with $ppa$, $yya$, $cca$ etc. The only
    remedy I can think of now is to build those conjuncts in Metafont
    as one glyph. (solved by creating prebuild conjuncts in Metafont for
    all conjuncts in the reformed script) [DONE]

Font:

*   Spacing is not optimal, need to change MF-code to have space before
    as well as after each character, which depends on the shape of the
    character (standing bar, bowl, or cusp sides)

    in every character:
    make width in beginchar equal to actual width,
    add a macro call: spacing(before#,after#), which sets the interletter
    space, and add in extra_endchar:

    currenttransform := currenttransform shifted before;
    w# := w# + before# + after#;

FEATURES (if I get a sudden insight on how to remove them, I will)

*   Pre-processed files are completely unreadable, and should not be edited.

*   When you use Malayalam with macro's that issue a \message, for example,
    \beginsection, only fully unreadable nonsense will appear on the
    screen, but the results will be correct.

*   Overful messages in Malayalam sentences are not very informative.

ENHANCEMENTS (when I find the time and get encouraged to impl. them, I may)

Font:

*   Convert the font to TrueType and PostScript type 1 [DONE!]

*   Lower the subscribed u tails, to give better appearance, parametrize
    their height; make first bow of va, etc. look more like circle; improve
    ya.

*   Older versions of some letters.

*   Design a version with thin-thick transitions as in traditional
    type (major project, I have coded some glyphs in directory MT, to
    give an idea)

Macros:

*   Create a LaTeX style definition for Malayalam

Pre-processor:

*   Although the font now contains all the needed punctuation marks, they
    are still borrowed from Computer Modern, this needs to be changed. [DONE]

*   Include full capabilities of patc. (8 hours)

*   Better (simpler) syllable composing algorithm

*   make an option to input/output Unicode, or let it work with
    Unicode internally or as intermediate format.

*   make an option to input/output ISCII text, so that text can be entered
    in the script itself. [DONE!]

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