Re: Transliterating font

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 17:34:25 EST

  • Next message: Philippe Verdy: "Re: Re: ZWJ, ZWNJ, CGJ and combination"

    From: "Chris Jacobs" <chris.jacobs@freeler.nl>

    > As long as the font is explicitly advertized as a 'font with built-in
    > transliterator', as long as the people know that what you see is not what
    is
    > in the text, this seems to me indeed a good idea.
    >
    > Would be nice for Klingon too :-)

    And in fact it's quite simple to do it with OpenType composite fonts that
    can be built to refer to glyphs searched in another font: such a
    "transliterator font" would not need any glyph, and thus does not require to
    buy a licence for a commercial design (this is a problem with the most
    recently standardized scripts: they are not usable as long as users cannot
    enter text with the new standardized code points without a suitable font).

    See it as a transitional solution which helps entering and viewing text. For
    the case of Tifinagh, the problem is not the input method (which is
    extremely easy to map on a keyboard with a single dead key and a few
    AltGr+key combinations), but the absence of suitable fonts for those that
    want and need to write text with the rules and orthograph of the traditional
    script. The second problem is the lack of knowledge of the traditionnal
    glyphs, even by people that speak, read and write the language more commonly
    with the Latin script.



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 09 2003 - 17:58:48 EST