
# Kaputa Font Project

[![License: GPL v3](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-GPL%20v3-blue.svg)](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0)
Kaputa is one the most known and widely used Sinhala Unicode fonts. It was released and made by the Kaputa.com community. Kaputa.com was the go-to Sri Lankan website in the portal era of the web 1.0 and accelerated the Sinhala web movement. This project is aimed at documenting the history, maintaining and updating the Kaputa font.



### About
Kaputa font project is reviving and bringing back the Kaputa Font to comply with the latest standards in Sinhala fonts.


* Version 1         - Kaputa (ASCII encoded font)
* Version 2         - kaputaunicode

* Version 2.9.0        - Kaputa
      * This version fixes a critical issue with Sinhala repaya and Rakaransa rendering and  introduced a new Latin glyph set (See the FONTLOG.md for the detailed changelog.) This version including the Kaputa-Unicode is not recommended for production use. They have old converted outlines and design is not consistent. However, for anybody already using the  Kaputa-Unicode it is a substantial upgrade. So if you really want to use the Kaputa font recommend switching to 2.9.0 version, and switching to v3.0.0 when it is ready.
* Version 2.9.x        - This series will be a set of point releases leading to version 3.0.0. Please see the milestones for the future plans.
* Version 3.x          - This will be the first production ready version of the new Kaput font. Please see the milestones for the future plans. We can not guarantee the timeline as this is developed by volunteers. If you would like to contribute the project please get in touch via the Issue tracker.



## Community
This is a free and open source project set up by a collaboration between Textual, the members of Kaputa.com community and members of the Sinhala Unicode Community. Textual acts as the benevolent-dictator of the project. Please see the AUTHORS.txt for the copyright details.

Feel free to post on Issues if you have any comments, issues or contributions to the project.

## History
Kaputa font was created in 2000 by Niranjan Meegammana, superseding Kandy fonts created by Niranjan and Michael Gruber in 1993 at National Hydrographic office to create local language navigational charts for fisherman, and was released on the Kaputa.com website for the community for free. Kaputa font improved earlier Kandy encoding and reduced the file size with an optimised minimal weight font for the use of internet communications. The thin design was derived from Matara, another font developed by Niranjan Meegammana in 1995 for Sinhala Word. From the early  2000s Kaputa was used for Sinhala email, web content online newspapers, government content and by software developers. Niranjan and Thusitha Randunge further optimized Kaputa font and released Kaputa2004 under e-Sri Lanka project. Shilpa Sayura local language e-learning initiative by Kaputa Team collaborated with online local community founding Sinhala Unicode Group in 2004. In 2006 participating in Sinhala Unicode committee, Niranjan Meegammana and Thusitha Randunuge developed Kaputa-Unicode font to comply SLS1134 Sinhala Unicode standard. Kaputa Uniwriter, online keyboard put Kaputa-Unicode font into mass usage.  Kaputa Unicode font is used in web applications and content  in Shipa Sayura , now http://shilpa64.lk developed by N P Vishva Kumara. In 2017, Textual started collaborating with the creators of the Kaputa font to set up the Kaputa Font Project to update and maintain the font.

## Contributing
Please see the build and contributing.md for instruction on how to contribute to the project, including the build instructions. If you plan on contributing to the project please see the issue tracker and let us know how you would like to contribute.
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## License
Older font files from Kaputa fonts does not include clear licensing details. However those were distributed as freeware from kaputa.com community. Moving forward from the version 2.9.0 the fonts are licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 with the font exception.

## Commercial use and support
GNU GPL license allows commercial use of the fonts as you wish, without any restrictions.
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