How do I read Vernacular Newspapers that use Bitstream WebFont Player?

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Level 1

0 points

How do I read Vernacular Newspapers that use Bitstream WebFont Player?

I am new convert - from a PC to Mac platform. I have a Black Macbook (2.4 GHz), brought last week through Apple Telesales in Singapore. I request help from fellow members on an issue that has surfaced while using Safari.

I want to read vernacular dalies at http://www.anandabazar.com and http://www.bartamanpatrika.com. These dalies use Bitstream WebFont Player that is supported by IE and Firefox (if the IE plugin is downloaded). In Safari, the website does not prompt to download the player, and it appears that Safari does not support Bitsrtream WebFont Player.

Is there a way out? I want to read these newspapers, but it seems the most powerful browser is not necessarily the most friendly browser.

Please suggest ways...will be indebted for your kind help.

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.3), Black Macbook

Posted on Jun 25, 2008 1:19 AM

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Answer 1

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Jun 25, 2008 2:21 AM in response to Amarendu

Hi Amarendu and welcome to the forums - and to your new Mac!

The links you provided open OK for me but apart from the language difficulty ⚠ the fonts do indeed not display properly.

There is some information here which might be useful to you:

http://www.bitstream.com/fonts/support/webfont_support/

but it appears that this is very old. They make no mention of any modern browsers.

You could try using Firefox as your browser.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,922 points

Jun 25, 2008 3:20 AM in response to Amarendu

These sites use the old .pfr (Portable Fonts Resources) embedded fonts technology which is not supported by any current Mac browsers as far as I know. I think you will need to use Windows, unless perhaps you can find a font to download which uses the same non-standard encoding. Hopefully these sites will eventually move to Unicode UTF-8, which does not require custom fonts and is the international standard for displaying these scripts on the internet.

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Answer 3

Amarendu Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 26, 2008 10:45 PM in response to Amarendu

Thanks Klaus and Tom for replying to your query.

Klaus, I have visited the Bitstream website before, and found that the information was not very helpful.

Tom, ever since I posted my query, I have partitioned by hard drive to install Windows Vista. I can now read the newspapers. I was prompted to download the player in IE.

Thanks for your responses guys.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,922 points

Jun 28, 2008 2:29 PM in response to Amarendu

Tom, ever since I posted my query, I have partitioned by hard drive to install Windows Vista. I can now read the newspapers. I was prompted to download the player in IE.

Should you in the future wish to read/write standard Unicode Bangla in OS X, the necessary fonts and keyboard can be obtained here:

http://ekushey.org/?page/osx

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