Digital Malayalam guidelines

Digital or Print Malayalam is the best choice?

In our beautiful Earth, All, we have a responsibility to live a better life with love, peace, harmony and happiness. But what is happening here? You just look at your daily life and then you may feel some pain with current social issues like corruption, arms deal, huge defence budget, crimes and various anti-social activities. India- my country has ancient culture, traditional customs, values, great authors, books etc,. However, our culture is also facing many problems now.

One example is misuse of smartphones! No doubt, social media and computer games are good means of entertainment. But, In case of new generation, there is no time limit and it’s a type of addiction. They absorbs bad habits due to the lack of time for doing good things like reading, healthy family relation, communication, balanced life etc,.

So, this site is an attempt to encourage new generation reading through their smartphones, tabs, laptops, phablet phones and e-readers. Here, free/paid Malayalam/English PDF eBooks are available.

All are welcome to my digital/electronic book reading and increase your life score!

1. What is a Malayalam eBook? A Malayalam book that is read through computers, smart phones, tablets, e-readers. Different formats are required to release such types.

2. Which is the best format for a Malayalam eBook? Some popular examples are ePUB from IDPF, KF8 from Amazon Kindle, palm media format from e-reader, iBook format from Apple, pdf from Adobe, etc. These are widely used for world leading languages like English. But in Malayalam, PDF is the best one. Because, the majority of browsers and devices that have built in PDF reader or viewer. Also, PDF keeps the complex script of Malayalam language having there own non flowing text.

3. Best size of pdf eBooks? 6 x 9 inch is considered as the best size for their own production.

4. Type of fonts for Malayalam eBooks? This requires unicode Malayalam fonts. Free unicode fonts are available in Swathanthra Malayalam computing(SMC) where you can download free unicode fonts like Meera, Anjali old lipi, Suruma, Dyuthi, Chilanka, Rachana, Raghu Malayalam and Keraleeyam. C-Dit Kerala (Clickerala) provides Kaveri and Nila free unicode fonts.C-Dac Pune has some free unicode fonts. The Unicode consortium has specific number coding for each language and it’s words hence uniform display of Malayalam words can be expected. Unicode supporting fonts are called open type fonts with a symbol ‘O’. Default Malayalam unicode in windows is Kartika. Android and Google chrome default is Notosans Malayalam.

5. Why ISM fonts are not suitable for making Malayalam eBooks? Intelligent script manager(ISM) fonts have ASCII 8 bit coding. It is not compatible for email because the email receiving device must have to download the same font before reading such ebooks. In fact, print books from publishers are made by ISM fonts and these are more beautiful to print than unicode. For example, ml-Revathi is a widely used ISM font in the majority of Malayalam print books. Again, several web fonts and dynamic fonts are there but usually copyrighted and not free. One beautiful example is Manorama panchari font specially designed for their private use only.

6. Suitable software for a Malayalam eBook? English is the world leading ebook language and the USA is the top screen reading country. So, giant publishers are looking for English title production with their own software or App, hence no Malayalam option there. However, some Malayalam App and software publishers are there, but not error free. In case of self publishing Malayalam authors, MS-Word is enough, convert it into pdf.

7. Which keyboard is suitable for Malayalam eBook typing? Inscript unicode keyboard designed by C-dac is the best choice for professional typing. Meanwhile, short work/first time user or malayali with Malayalam word confusions can adopt Google transliteration. This is nothing but, type in English then automatic conversion to Malayalam (manglish way!). You should remember to free download it from the official Google transliteration site only.

8. How buyers discover digital books? Around 34 percent buy through recommendations from blogs, forums and fellow readers. 24 percent from comments and reviews, another 18 percent select their favorite author only.

9. World eBook best seller titles? Remember, 2014 publishers having top number of best seller titles are-Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, The amazon.

10. World largest digital book providers? Amazon, Apple iBooks/iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Smashwords, Google eBooks.

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