Thaana Common Fonts Research
Thaana Common Fonts Research (CFR) is a Thaana related research project I launched late last month and has been running since. Today, I finally got around to writing down some introductory information on the project, so here it is.
- An understanding of the prevalence of individual Thaana fonts
- An understanding of the co-occurrence dynamics of Thaana fonts
- The distribution of Thaana Unicode and non-Unicode Thaana fonts
- The OS dependence of the fonts
- Get a first look into the distribution of Thaana fonts
- Develop recommendations for the use of fonts on the web
- Develop recommendations for the use of fonts in software and in documents
- Formulate plans for improving the reach of Thaana (and hence, Dhivehi)
The process goes like as follows:
1) A small, invisible Flash-based data collector is embedded into websites.
2) When a user visits a participating website, the data collector automatically compiles a list of the fonts installed on the system. This is done once per user device.
3) The font names and the operating system of the user is sent to my server where the data is logged for later analysis.
It is intended that data sample collection will be carried out until the end of this month (June 2009).
If you operate a high traffic Thaana-based website, I urge you to consider participating and help make this project a success. My thanks in advance!
You can see LIVE stats on the CFR project home.
Introduction
This project will conduct some basic research into the prevalence and distribution of Thaana fonts.Purpose
The investigation is aimed at obtaining:- An understanding of the prevalence of individual Thaana fonts
- An understanding of the co-occurrence dynamics of Thaana fonts
- The distribution of Thaana Unicode and non-Unicode Thaana fonts
- The OS dependence of the fonts
Significance
This study will help us to:- Get a first look into the distribution of Thaana fonts
- Develop recommendations for the use of fonts on the web
- Develop recommendations for the use of fonts in software and in documents
- Formulate plans for improving the reach of Thaana (and hence, Dhivehi)
Method
The research is conducted via the World Wide Web by sampling the fonts installed on the devices used by Maldivian web users.The process goes like as follows:
1) A small, invisible Flash-based data collector is embedded into websites.
2) When a user visits a participating website, the data collector automatically compiles a list of the fonts installed on the system. This is done once per user device.
3) The font names and the operating system of the user is sent to my server where the data is logged for later analysis.
It is intended that data sample collection will be carried out until the end of this month (June 2009).
Participate
Webmasters and website owners can participate and contribute to this research by embedding the Flash-based data collector using the HTML code shown below into their website. Please change the DOMAINHERE bit to the domain name of your site so that I know who to chase if there are issues. The field is also used to note your contribution and participation in the project.<object data="http://labs.jawish.org/cfr/cfr.swf" height="1" width="1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> <param name="flashvars" value="site=DOMAINHERE" /> <param name="movie" value="http://labs.jawish.org/cfr/cfr.swf" /> </object>
If you operate a high traffic Thaana-based website, I urge you to consider participating and help make this project a success. My thanks in advance!
Statistics
As of writing this post, 2293 data samples has been collected and 269 Thaana fonts have been identified and is being tracked.You can see LIVE stats on the CFR project home.
