From: David Starner (prosfilaes@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2008 - 17:37:40 CST
On Jan 4, 2008 5:53 PM, Dominikus Scherkl <lyratelle@gmx.de> wrote:
> Yes, I would agree.
> Wouldn't it a better idea to use the modern IPA charakters which
> represent the described sounds, and use a specialized font in which
> those IPA characters have the glyphs used to present the historic book?
There is no necessarily a direct match between the characters of the
phonetic alphabet and of the IPA, and it may be outright impossible if
some of the characters in the ASCII range have to be remapped; j and c
are notorious for being used in a wide variety of different ways. It's
also an interpretation that may mislead readers; if you're wrong in
your match, or if the dictionary uses a broader or narrower
interpretation of its symbol, the IPA won't read like the original
did.
A specialized font can only be used in a document for distribution in
certain circumstances. PDF does it well, but most other formats will
do awkwardly if at all. What's worse, many tools that work on the text
will display in other fonts; it will be exceedingly confusing to try a
search on a text when the underlying text is only distantly related to
the displayed text, and any cut and paste will likely revert back to
the plain text.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jan 04 2008 - 17:40:00 CST