Re: Canadian Unified Syllabics

From: chris@languagegeek.com
Date: Tue Feb 10 2004 - 20:02:13 EST

  • Next message: Katsuhiko Momoi: "Line breaking for Kanbun and Bopomofo characters"

    Hello

    I would like to make a few comments about the Aboriginal Serif font.

    First, the reason for putting so many characters in the PUA is as follows.
    For Blackfoot, Dene, Cree (some dialects), and Ojibway (some dialects),
    some important characters are missing to write these languages properly.
    For example, as far as I can figure, within UCAS one cannot differentiate
    between top-line, mid-line, and baseline finals. So because these finals
    had to be lumped in the PUA (along with some other characters), I put glyph
    variants there also. Needless to say, one cannot write Dene or Ojibway
    (i-final) using Code2000. So I don't know what else to say. I want the
    examples on my site to be legible (dot accents non-spaced in the middle of
    syllabics instead of above them aren't really acceptable), and I want the
    characters to look like what speakers are familiar with, otherwise they may
    very well choose not to use the font, keyboards, etc.

    My aim is that people can type their own language on the computer they have
    now. Once OpenType is available on my machine and others, I will release
    fonts which have OpenType tables, calling the same glyphs that are now in
    the PUA. This way, I am trying to make some humble attempt at backward
    compatibility. But for now, if people cannot use the OpenType
    substitutions, what else should I do?

    I am building specific fonts for specific languages, but I wanted one font
    that would display the lot. That way, if someone wanted to use
    languagegeek.com, they would only have to download one font, instead of one
    per language.

    Please notice that months ago, I changed the name of the font from
    "Aboriginal Serif Unicode" to "Aboriginal Serif" in response to comments
    made earlier on this list; I also note on every page that one would have to
    download my font to view the pages properly.

    Thank-you.. Chris

    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    mail2web - Check your email from the web at
    http://mail2web.com/ .



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 10 2004 - 20:43:28 EST