The LaTeX Tutorial

primer-1The LaTeX Tutorial — A Primer was published by the Indian TeX Users Group in 2002. The intended audience were the novice users of LaTeX, particularly the students and researchers who’re disgruntled with the wordprocessors (which promise a lot with dismal delivery!). The tutorial has been very popular among this community. However, the book is not without shortcomings by way of typos, errors in the verbatim code listings and lack of a comprehensive index. Since the Indian TeX Users Group is now non-functional, Sayahna Foundation has taken up the publication of this valued documentation and released this second edition.

It is only a pre-release version 1 for the user community to go through the book and suggest further modifications, corrections, etc. Many persons have contributed to this volume, but notable among them is Dr E Krishnan, an ardent free software and math education activist who served as the chief editor of the book.

Apart from fixing all problems including the reported ones, the chapter on boxes has been revised, so also a new chapter on graphics inclusion has been added as the replacement of the very basic original content about the topic in the floats chapter of previous edition. An exhaustive index has also been added.

A release candidate version 2 is also planned which will happen on the last week of February 2020 with two more chapters added (i) how to write a thesis or dissertation using LaTeX and (ii) typesetting documents with Indic scripts with special reference to Malayalam script. Readers are also requested to contribute to this volume if they can.

Download link: http://books.sayahna.org/en/pdf/primer-2.rc1.pdf

Public statement by Rachana Institute of Typography on the copyright/credit issue of SMC and RIT fonts



About us

We — KH Hussain, CV Radhakrishnan, PK Ashok Kumar and KV Rajeesh — are the copyright holders of TN Joy font. Many of us have worked on free/libre/open source software for years in our spare time and contributed code, design, fonts, documentation, localization and financial support to various free software projects. Our contributions can be found easily on the Web and elsewhere.

A copyright/‘credit’ issue

Immediately after the font ‘TN Joy’ was released to public by Rachana Institute of Typography (RIT), on 2-Oct-2019, Santhosh Thottingal raised a question in a forum with enough number of participants to qualify as a public discussion:

@rajeeshknambiar there are lot (sic) of contributions from me, Kavya in the build scripts, tests, and feature files in https://gitlab.com/rit-fonts/tnjoy/ Consider giving credit.

On 14-Oct-2019, Santhosh followed up again.

@rajeeshknambiar did not reply to my request for giving credits in their font.

and

Ask hussain sir to give credits for font testing and building framework. Crediting anivar alone is not enough.”

To which Rajeesh responded on 19-Oct-2019, to discuss with all the copyright holders of TN Joy about the issue:

“Noted. I will try to take it up for discussion and let you know.

On 29-Oct-2019, Santhosh again followed up:

അങ്ങനെ എഴുതുകയും ചെയ്യുകയും ചെയ്ത ഫോണ്ടിന്റെ കാര്യങ്ങൾക്ക് ക്രെഡിറ്റ് കിട്ടിയില്ലെന്നാണ് പറയുന്നത് അനിവർ:) sundar, and janayugam fonts. ഇതിൽ രാജാജിയുടെ ഹെൽപ്പൊന്നും വേണ്ട. even @rajeeshknambiar can just fix it

Analysis

During the first week of Nov-2019 for the summit organized by Kerala Media Academy, all the copyright holders of TN Joy font met and discussed the issue raised by Santhosh.

As free software developers and users, it was not our intention to violate copyright or appropriate credit of another free software developer’s work at all. Not only in intention, but we strived to achieve that in all our projects by acts. So, this accusation came as a surprise to us and we decided to take a deeper look at how this issue originated and what the root cause is, to address it properly.

We did a detailed analysis and documented the following details.

Technical background

1.
A Malayalam Unicode font has two essential parts — the Glyphs (അക്ഷരരൂപങ്ങൾ) and the OpenType shaping lookup rules. Unlike Latin fonts, both of these are necessary for proper shaping. The final TTF/OTF/WOFF2  contains both Glyphs and OpenType shaping rules to make a Malayalam Unicode font usable software. Without either, such a software is not usable.

Figure 1: Malayalam text without shaping (left) and with correct shaping (right).
2.
The Malayalam opentype features (GSUB  and GPOS  ‘lookup rules’) used in font ‘TN Joy’ developed by Rachana Institute of Typography (RIT) are adapted from that of font ‘Sundar’ which in turn are adapted from feature file of ‘Rachana’.
3.
To develop the feature file of Rachana over the years, many have contributed including the original author Hussain KH , Suresh P, Santhosh Thottingal, Rajeesh KV, Kavya Manohar et al. [1].
4.
Hussain KH invented and implemented the glyph naming conventions (‘k1’ for ‘ ക’, ‘xx’ for ‘ ്’ etc. instead of names like ‘uni0D15’ etc.), which made font featuring highly comprehensible for programming and much easier to maintain. This naming scheme is followed by all fonts maintained by Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC) and RIT. This was also the naming scheme in fonts developed by ATPS  and when it was pointed out that those fonts were derived from SMC’s, the immediate change made was renaming the glyphs and lookup rules [2], 3, 4].
5.
Rajeesh is the original author of lookup rules of SMC’s fonts for revised ‘mlm2’ OpenType specification for Malayalam, and made it possible to support both ‘mlym’ and ‘mlm2’ specification in a single font. This resulted in making a single font work well with Windows XP, Pango/Qt4 era applications and Uniscribe, HarfBuzz era applications [5].
6.
In 2015, Santhosh split the comprehensive lookup rules from the Fontforge SFD  file of Rachana into a separate feature file, but the copyright statements were not preserved [4]. It is our opinion that removing copyright statements is violation of copyright act (hence a crime) and immoral in the free software world. This is also the root cause for missing copyright in the OpenType lookup rules and build script, of the fonts in question.
7.
The same lookup rules in 2, 4 and 5 are used and adapted by subsequent fonts developed by SMC  and RIT, such as Chilanka, Manjari, Sundar, Gayathri, TN Joy etc. Rajeesh did not claim for credit or copyright when Manjari or Gayathri was released.

RIT’s statement

With this background,

8.
Fonts developed, maintained and distributed by both SMC  and RIT, specifically its OpenType lookup rules + fontforge based build tool + test cases are at the heart of this issue. This is caused by the change introduced by Santhosh in [6].
9.
The copyright holders of TN Joy font were made aware of such ‘credit’ issue — the definition of which Santhosh has not clarified and in RIT’s understanding is sufficient and limited to ‘copyright’. Thanks for bringing light into such a potential legal and moral risk that affects the users and organizations using these fonts.
10.
RIT  would like to acknowledge the copyright of Santhosh Thottingal and Kavya Manohar for the development of ‘Sundar’ and ‘TN Joy’ in the areas of lookup rules, the ‘build script’ and comprehensive ‘test file’. RIT  is willing to add the missing copyright notice to these files;

and RIT asked Santhosh to consider:

11.
Preserve the copyright of the original authors of the ‘lookup rules’ and Naming convention (notation for Glyphs) in all these fonts. The copyright and license statement should read:

“Copyright: Digitized data copyright (c) 2004–2005 Rachana Akshara Vedi (Chitrajakumar R, Hussain KH, Gangadharan N, Vijayakumaran Nair, Subash Kuraiakose), (c) 2006–2016 Hussain KH, Suresh P, Santhosh Thottingal, Rajeesh K Nambiar, Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (http://smc.org.in). This file is licensed under OFL  1.1.”

12.
The Fontforge based ‘build script’ added by Santhosh used to generate TTF/OTF/WOFF/WOFF2 files is adapted from that of Amiri font by Khaled Hosny [7] without preserving copyright or attribution. RIT requests to credit the original author[s] of this tool. It is of our opinion that removing copyright statements from a free software program code is illegal and immoral. It is also hypocritical when a person who asserts one’s own credit does this crime to other well-known and respected free software developer[s].
13.
Test cases in the ‘test file’ are contributed by various contributors, RIT  request to add the attribution of such contributors to the extent possible (Kavya Manohar, Santhosh Thottingal, Rajeesh KV). Santhosh has responded to this request as “test cases were mainly prepared by Kavya and no need to have attribution”, but RIT  firmly believes the copyright statements of the contributors must be added.
14.
The original author of ‘mlym.sty’ file [8] to typeset Unicode Malayalam using XeTeX is Suresh P, which was enhanced by Rajeesh KV with inputs from Hussain KH. Due to frequent requests on how to typeset Malayalam using Unicode, in 2013 Rajeesh wrote a wiki page [9] with basic details, which was later extended by other developers with instructions to install and setup XeTeX packages. This wiki article was later extended by Santhosh by adding matter from Wikipedia. This article was then copied and published in Santhosh’s blog [10] without attributing the authors, and [10] is frequently provided by Santhosh as the first response to general public asking for documentation on how to typeset Malayalam using XeTeX. It is shockingly hypocritical that plagiarism is practised by a well known free software developer who asserts one’s own credit without any respect to others copyright or credit. RIT  would like Santhosh to either: (a) redact [10] and redirect to [9] instead, or (b) credit the original authors in [10].

RIT  stopped the analysis and investigation of Santhosh’s claim at this point, as we have identified the root cause of missing copyrights and these are the important topics directly affecting RIT  developers.

Conclusion

RIT  tried to resolve the issue in private discussion with Santhosh Thottingal but unfortunately it did not succeed. Santhosh has not agreed to reinstate the copyright statement of original authors. Santhosh did not respond to many of the pointed questions we raised and deflected on answering others. Santhosh also refused to clarify what he means by ‘credit’ despite repeated pointed questions. Santhosh withdrew his claim for credit in one of the emails; and it is possible that he could change the mind any time and the issue could resurface. This surrounds the fonts by SMC  and RIT  in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (which the corporate proprietary companies successfully used against free software for years) and put all the individual users and organizations and developers using these fonts under legal risk and moral ambiguity.

Thus,

15.
RIT  has added proper copyright statements to all the software used in building its fonts, viz. ‘Sundar’ and ‘ TN Joy’ [11,12].
16.
RIT  believes that our primary responsibility is towards the individual and institutional users of our fonts and developers depending on our tools; and they should be able to use our fonts and tools without any legal risk or moral ambiguity. RIT, to the best of its knowledge, has fulfilled that responsibility and strive to do so.
17.
RIT also understands that as with any issue in the free software world, the community would be divided, and it is a painful thing. RIT request the community to carefully consider all the facts before making a choice.

This will be the final public statement of RIT on the copyright issue raised by Santhosh Thottingal.

Signed

  • KH Hussain
  • CV Radhakrishnan
  • PK Ashok Kumar
  • KV Rajeesh

References

[1]
Rachana font commit history, URL https://gitlab.com/smc/…
[2]
Kathir font licensing issue (1), 2014, URL http://lists.smc.org.in/…
[3]
Kathir font licensing issue (2), 2014, URL http://lists.smc.org.in/…
[4]
ATPS  fonts licensing issue, 2015, URL https://groups.google.com/…
[5]
Introducing and integrating ‘mlm2’ OpenType shaping rules, 2013, URL https://gitlab.com/smc/…
[6]
Split Glyphs and OpenType shaping rules, 2015, URL https://gitlab.com/smc/…
[7]
Amiri font build tool, URL https://github.com/alif-type/…
[8]
XeTEX Malayalam style file for ‘Logbook of an Observer’, 2012, URL https://github.com/smc/…
[9]
Typesetting Malayalam using XeTEX, SMC  Wiki page history, 2013, URL https://wiki.smc.org.in/…
[10]
2014, https://thottingal.in/blog/…
[11]
Sundar font, reinstate copyright and license statements, 2019, URL https://gitlab.com/rit-fonts/…
[12]
TN Joy font, reinstate copyright and license statements, 2019, URL https://gitlab.com/rit-fonts/…

Profile of the signatories

  • KH Hussain
    Library and information scientist by training and profession, font designer and developer of several fonts including, Rachana, Meera, Meera Inimai, TN Joy, RSugathan, Janayugom, Keraleeyam, Uroob, etc., free software activist, released all fonts under Open Font License. Played an important role in the migration of Janayugom dail to free software based production technologies.
  • CV Radhakrishnan
    Free software activist and TeX programmer, one of the founders of the Free Software Foundation of India and Indian TeX Users Group. Organized two annual meetings of the TeX Users Group in Trivandrum in 2002 and 2011. Wrote several packages (libraries) in LaTeX and released under free license (LPPL) at Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN).
  • PK Ashok Kumar
    Typesetter by profession and training, has four decades of extensive experience in typesetting right from the age of metal typefaces through digitized typesetting including TeX and LaTeX. Free content activist and principal tester for fonts developed by RIT, played a major role in the migration of production of Janayugom daily using free software.
  • KV Rajeesh
    Free software developer and user. Fedora project developer since 2008 and KDE  developer since 2011. Font maintainer and language computing contributor to Swathanthra Malayalam Computing since 2008. Member of Indic testing team for HarfBuzz. Google Summer of Code mentor. Contributes to various free software projects including Qt, GNOME, VLC, Odoo, Fontforge, SILE, ConTeXt, Okular, etc.

Awesome font Packages

Awesome font Everybody loves the icons provided by Font Awesome since they are pixel perfect, accessibility minded, desktop and web friendly. The free version of the font provides 1,535 icons and pro version provides 7016 icons which encompass almost all facets of human activities for which an icon might be necessitated when a software interface or web page is designed. Such is the variety of themes that were covered. In fact, TeXFolio and Neptune use the free version of awesome fonts for the choice of icons used for the web interfaces.

Almost in tune with the release of awesome fonts, a few packages have also appeared at CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network, the official repository where TeX software are archived for public consumption. The first among the packages, namely, fontawesome.sty contributed by Xavier Danaux who did the font integration into LaTeX and Dave Gandy who indeed designed the awesome fonts. The package provides easy to use interface to invoke the glyph in a TeX document similar to the one followed in web development.

Second package is fontawesome5.sty by Marcel Kruger which does an identical job as its predecessor with similar interface, but covers all the glyph in the latest version of the font (5.10). The last one is awesomebox.sty by Etienne Deparis. It provides an easy interface to include any of the glyph which can be used in a document to communicate some information like a warning, caveat, additional information, etc., with necessary bells and whistles.  The user can also define newer functions and environments of her choice. In fact, the newer edition of LaTeX Primer of TUGIndia will have this package used to indicate warnings and extra information to the reader. All the packages are available at https://ctan.org/pkg/<pkgname> for free download and usage.

Biblatex 3.0

Biblatex package has undergone a lot of changes as a consequence of its revision to version 3.0. The back-end namely biber (the modern equivalent of BibTeX program) which is needed to exploit all the features of biblatex has also been upgraded to a newer version with changes in the data structure of resultant bibliographic listing file. Both these revisions have broken the functionality of current version of biblatex.4ht of TeX4ht bundle causing panic among biblatex users, particularly, in the humanities world. This page in github issue tracker of biblatex has a long exchange about the current issues. The noteworthy postings in this page are quoted below:

Continue reading ‘Biblatex 3.0’

Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle

I have serious mobility restrictions due to muscular dystrophy and have been wheelchair bound for several years now. Until recently, I could walk a few steps without too much risk of falling down and could get into my vehicle to travel to work and back. However, due to progressive nature of the disease, continued and steady wasting of muscle fibers in lower limbs has left me completely dependent on wheelchair now. As such, it has become a nightmare to get into the vehicle and have been searching for a wheelchair accessible vehicle to make my travel between home and work a hassle-free affair, since these two places are otherwise completely accessible.

cvr10
Continue reading ‘Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle’

TeXPortal, a TeX system for Android

If you’re an Android user looking for a complete TEX system in a tablet, here is a glad news waiting for you . An application namely, TEXPortal in combination with TEXpert will make a complete TEX system in your Android tablet or smart phone. TEXPortal is a complete TEXLive distribution ported for Android and TEXpert is a full fledged text editor and integrated development environment within which the user can create, edit, run the compiler, view and debug without leaving it. The user interface is uncluttered, elegantly simple and very easy to use that will put to shame some of the cloud based frameworks that have germinated in the fertile soil of Internet in recent times.
Continue reading ‘TeXPortal, a TeX system for Android’

TLC in ePub format

Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goossens, with Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley. The LATEX Companion -– 2nd ed. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-201-36299-6. 2004, Pearson Education, Inc., Boston, MA.

TeX Lion

Courtesey: Paulo Cereda

The 1,200 pages long The LATEX Companion (TLC) is now available in a variety of ebook formats — ePUB, mobi and PDF. To quote Frank Mittelbach:
Continue reading ‘TLC in ePub format’

Plagiarized Website

RIVER-VALLEY.COM is a domain name which I have been holding since 26 March, 1998. I had allowed the domain name to be used by Focal Image (India) Private Limited, an IT enabled service company located in Trivandrum, India of which I am one of the directors. All versions of the website of this domain from October 1999 to till date are also available at Internet Archive.

Continue reading ‘Plagiarized Website’

TeX4ht and Multicolumn Layout

Nasser M. Abbassi had filed a feature request at TeX4ht project for multicolumn support in TeX4ht which is lacking at the moment. This link provides the latest specifications of W3C relating to multicolumn layout in HTML which some of the mainstream browsers support in varying degrees. Our initial efforts are pointed towards multicol package so that TeX4ht provides enough hooks to generate output with multicolumn layout as envisaged in LATEX by multicol package. Support for \twocolumn still remains to be done, though.

Continue reading ‘TeX4ht and Multicolumn Layout’

Aaron, the passionate liberator

Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz

Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz in 2002 (Courtesy Wikipedia)

The intellectual hoarders around the world would have heaved a sigh of relief when they heard about the tragic death of Aaron Swartz. The Hindu rightly pointed out that the world had become poorer with the death of this computing genius and passionate activist who stood for free access to knowledge and information in the Internet. He worked hard to free information vaulted behind pay walls. In that effort, the young adventurer in him coupled with his programing prowess succeeded to download 4.8 million articles from the digital library of JSTOR and distributed freely in the Internet. Continue reading ‘Aaron, the passionate liberator’