Bangla Website & Possible Bangla Section

[chinaman]

Check out the following site. Somehow, they used bangla fonts exclusively without downloading fonts or the pdf thing.

http://www.banglalive.com/

Any idea as to how they accomplised this? May be in the future we'll have a bangla section of our own.

[Arnab]

I had a thread about it in the staff forum a few weeks ago and explained how it works (well, originally I did the same thing last october in the old messageborard, too). Why don't you read that thread again?

[Edited on 28-12-2003 by Arnab]

[chinaman]

If I remember it correctly, nobody explained what a webfont is or how it works or how to instruct the browser to download it or even if there are ways to walk arround....

Wheather we impliment bangla here or not, it's always nice to know how bangla web pages can be built efficiently.

I'm sure there might be experts out there among our members who might shed some lights.

[Arnab]

I am one of those experts, in fact, I am the only one here who actually tried to do something with it. Although it was a while ago, before you even joined this board.

Webfonts are embedded in the webpage. They are also called embedded fonts. These font files reside only on the remote server in the same directory as the webpage. When somebody loads a page that utilizes some embedded font, the embedded font is automatically downloaded and implemented by the browser from the remote server on the fly. The font is not going to be installed on your local machine. It always resides on the server. So no burden of downloading a font. It's all handled by the browser.

If you are the creator of the webpage, you need to create an embedded font for your own webpage. You have to use the micrsoft free software WEFT to do that. There was another program from another company, but it folded recently. Then you have to incorporate that embeedded font in your webpage using a css style code.

Search on Google for embedded fonts. There are a few hands-on, step-by-step tutorials on this very subject, I am sure.

Prothom Alo and Bhorer Kagoj have been using embedded fonts for their websites for months now.


[Edited on 28-12-2003 by Arnab]

[Orpheus]

Chinaman, I am curious.. I always wanted to know about you....

-your age
-what you do (student?)

actually thats all I wanted to know.... Wanna share....... oh yeah.....
are you married?

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by Orpheus : I wasted my 500th post on you! I better get an answer...]

[chinaman]

Thank you Arnab for the explanation.

Well, Orpheus, let's play the hide and seek game, OK? Answers to your questions are available in this site in "appropriate" places. I'm sure you'll find it, if not, u2u me. Have fun.

[Orpheus]

well it's hard to read every single thing on this messageboard... and I doubt if anyone does it....

anyways, got your age and location.... but what do you do though...

NOrmally I wouldn't care but the only reason why I am asking is cuz you have so much fxxxxxxxxxxxx time on your hand..... How does a man in your age get that - just wondering .... amazing!

[chinaman]

Lucky me, isn't it?

[Orpheus]

well not really unless you think you are...

anyways, lets stick to cricket!

[Mahmood]

We can use Bangla font to build a site that wont need downloading. However, the main question is, who will do it? write and maintain the Bangla articles?

It seems lot more work than simply writing an English article.

[chinaman]

One possible way to contribute bangla article is to copy-n-paste from Bhorer Kagoj and likes. At the begining we may opt to update it on an irregular basis (once in a week or even month). It has potential to increase traffic.

[Arnab]

Can't copy-paste. The embedded font only works when it resides on the same server as the webpage. When the font is created, the location of html files that can use the font is specified by the creator.

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by Arnab]

[Arnab]

Originally posted by Rajputro
However, the main question is, who will do it? write and maintain the Bangla articles?

It seems lot more work than simply writing an English article.

One way (and in my opinion the best) to quickly write bangla article is this:

1. Use a transliteration banla software to write bangla articles on the fly. Example: bangsee. It's supereasy to use. We do the same thing all the time here on this board.

Whenever we want to write something in Bangla, we just write something like this:

Ami bangla bhashai likhte pocchondo kori.

The transliteration software such as Bangsee converts the above "Bangla-written-in-english-letters" to actual Bangla font-based "Bangla-in-bangla"on the fly. There are some rules of course, but it's minimal and extremely intuitive.

2. Write Bangla articles in using a transliteration wordprocessor. Save it as a webpage.

3. The webmaster of banglacricket will create an embedded font from the one used in the transliteration software.

4. Upload the webpage with the article on Banglacricket server in the directory where the font is. And voila! Read articles in Bangla.

-------------------------------

Writers don't need to worry about anything but writing articles on their transliteration software and saving them as webpages and then send/email the file to the administrator.

-------------------------------

Caveat:

Transliteration softwares like Bangsee are not free. There was another software called Bornosoft (Our Rafiq Bhai actually donated for that project) which is supposed to be free. I will check.

[chinaman]

So there's no way to copy quotes from other sites like we do in english everyday here?

[Arnab]

There's no need to quote, you can just give us the link to the webpage.

Of course quoting relevant parts would have been great, but that's not possible. We as a nation are backward gadhas, so we don't have a stable protocol for web-based bangla and bangla-reading capability is not included in any browser.

The only way to quote relevant sections is to take a screen shot of the thing (or crop out the relevant section if it is a pdf), save it as a gif/jpeg and then upload the gif/jpeg as attachment, like Raj bhai and some others have been doing. I personally think that's pretty lame, but that's the only choice we have now.

Or, as I said, you can link to the article. That makes more sense to me. We don't need to reproduce and read the whole news here. Linking is enough.

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by Arnab]

[Arnab]

I just created a bangla webpage using an embedded bangla font. I used Bornosoft as the transliteration software. Should look fine on Internet Explorer.

Here you go:

link removed

[Edited on 30-12-2003 by Arnab]

[Orpheus]

Bornosoft is the best.... very flexible too... by flexible I mean it allows different "spelling" for the same word. It's not free... I used the free one... it's crap, in order to write Bangladesh... you have to spell it differently...

anyways, ....I just wanted to say..

My friend cracked Bornosoft after he got pissed at the guy who wouldn't give him another key for his laptop.

He is no cracker... 1st year in computer Engineering. So arnab, you should be able to do it too......

hint: they used VB to create that! Muahahhahaha

p.s. Please dont' ask me to provide you the software.. and a key.. I WoNT! I don't like to stick bamboo to my fellow Bangladeshi brother who is trying to make a living........... He is no microsoft! But I can however write you guys articles

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by Orpheus]

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by Orpheus : arnab already using bornosoft?? free?? it's the non-savable version right?]

[Orpheus]

It didn't come out ARnab.... i only see some nonsense..

[Arnab]

Hmm..interesting. You're right. I must have coded something wrong.

Lemme fix that.

[chinaman]

Originally posted by Orpheus

Please dont' ask me to provide you the software.. and a key.. I WoNT! I don't like to stick bamboo to my fellow Bangladeshi brother who is trying to make a living........... He is no microsoft! But I can however write you guys articles

That's huge, Orph. My salute to you. And your willingness to write is a much needed welcome news. Two thumbs up.

[Orpheus]

ACtually waht I meant was - you would write the article... like

"Amar shonar bangla.. keno baare bare haare"

I would just run that through the software. You sure don't want me to write articles and that too in bangla... that's a disaster waiting to happen!

[bhobishshot]

These webfont pages don't work with mozilla.

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by bhobishshot]

[Edited on 29-12-2003 by bhobishshot]

[Arnab]

1. The webfont should work now, albeit one or two letters are corrupted. I'll fix that.

2. Bhobishshot, as of now, they will only work on IE and Opera. Can you view prothom-alo articles on Mozilla?

[Orpheus]

[Arnab]

Hmm. It works on my housemate's PC on IE6. Try reloading the page. If still doesn't work, empty your cache and relaod again. Tell me what you saw.