Re: Mandombe

From: Stephan Stiller <sstiller_at_stanford.edu>
Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2012 03:42:27 -0700

> A very interesting script indeed. (Never heard of it before).
> While the shape andsc the impression it does is quite intriguing and
> fascinating, I'd think that it's rather impractical to write actually.

Thank you. That's indeed the elephant in the room. Writing systems
differ /hugely/ in their practicability. Criteria like

  * ease of being handwritten
  * ease of being typed
  * speed of being read
  * likelihood of confusion of individual characters/letters/symbols (in
    either production or recognition)
  * 1-to-1-ness of the mapping between orthographic representation and
    phoneme string

seem to rarely be considered as design criteria. I never understood
this. Discussions with people used to a particular writing system tend
to reveal the lack of critical thinking applied to such issues.

Incidentally, it seems like strict geometric shapes pose a particular
problem for handwriting. Letter sets with lots of /strict/ right angles
and the like or with angles in certain directions (seemingly generated
through "symmetrically motivated" design) are often not easy to produce
by hand.

Stephan
Received on Sat Jun 09 2012 - 05:49:50 CDT

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