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Today, there’s an increasing demand in Sri Lanka, for use of nice Sinhala fonts with computer
applications. Most people require Sinhala fonts primarily for 2 things. Either to use with Word
or with their Web applications! Of course, the cognoscenti know that you can also use Sinhala
fonts with PowerPoint and Excel presentations, not to mention, any applications designed using
VB, Visual C++, etc. While it is possible to devise a Sinhala font set that requires no driver for
some letters such as ú, then tall letters like j, etc. will look squashed. Even then, letters like ÿ”
¨ will still pose a problem. With the nicer-looking fonts you definitely need a font driver or be
eternally struggling with Insert Symbol in Word (and if needs be, copy and paste those letters
elsewhere to applications where you really need them), or be saddled with ‘letters’ like ja or oq
or even <q!
But most truly good Sinhala font drivers available hitherto were terribly expensive. What I myself
could afford, was far from satisfactory. So, I decided to write my own... Thus was“Lazy Sinhala”
^—f,ais isxy,˜& born...
“Lazy Sinhala” allows you to type Sinhala text in its window, using the so-called Wijeysekera
Keyboard favoured by Sinhala typists, and copy and paste that text into Word or whatsoever!
Though originally done just for fun, soon I got a bit more ambitious...
I found a way to provide a decent Sinhala menu using command buttons, since Visual Basic 6 does
not provide a direct route to change the default font in the menu editor of its forms... Again, though
originally providing only for one particular Sinhala font (DL Manel Bold.x), since FM Abhaya was
better... especially when typing old Sinhala texts... I revised the driver code to accommodate
both... Then at the Godage Book Emporium where I asked the feasibility of giving out a CD
containing my font driver (ahem clipboard) with a book on Excel that I had written called “Getting
To Know Excel – An Easy Primer”, which sets out inter-alia how to give Sinhala headings to Excel
charts etc., they told me that it would be nice if I could support some more fonts in the DL & FM
families... So, that too came to pass.
And in between, I found myself writing another Sinhala font clipboard called “Sura Sinhala” ^—iQr
isxy,˜& designed to produce Rich Text Format (.RTF) files which in fact can be opened directly
in Word, Power Point, etc. Even if you copy and paste into the Word Editor from “Sura Sinhala”,
there’s no need to reset the font(s)... as is the case with “Lazy Sinhala”. Besides, “Sura Sinhala”
allows easy mixing of the supported Sinhala fonts with other fonts available.... And finally I have
managed to write a decent installer that seems to the needful even to the extent of adding the
necessary shortcuts to the Desk Top, etc. |
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