Daniel,
Is there a possibility to get an image what a red/black text looks
like? Or do you know a website that has an image and more information?
I like what you say at the end of your reply:
"My thought at the time was that it was just a natural adjustment that
one makes when going from ink and paper to computer typography, the
goal being that we try to improve upon what the hand can do without
losing the essence of it."
It makes a lot of sense, especially now that color monitors and color
printers are normal in our computer life. Why do we have to stick to
monochrome characters and fonts and glyphs? A lot of the existing
symbols in Unicode would look better in color, too.
But reading your description on how the red markup is performed I could
imagine it being done with a markup command changing color and
returning to a character and applying the red markup character over it.
Or what about a ZWJ with color change command?
Dave
--- Daniel Yacob <unicode@geez.org> wrote:
> > In the handwritten form, could you please say whether the adding of
> the red
> > increases the width of the area needed to represent the character?
>
> yes, absolutely, at least by the width of two dots.
>
>
> > Also, when handwritten, does the scribe have a black pen in one
> hand and a
> > red pen in the other so that colouring takes place on a character
> by
> > character basis as writing proceeds, or does the scribe put down
> one pen and
> > pick up another, and, if so, is that on a character by character
> basis or is
> > that on the basis of producing a number of characters in black and
> then
> > adding the red afterwards. This would seem to be possibly
> significant due
> > to the possible need to allow for the greater width of the area
> used for a
> > character that is later to receive red flourishes.
>
> my oh my, these are wonderfully interesting questions :) I would
> think the
> use of tools would be highly sensitive to the experience, training,
> and
> learned habits of the writer. I haven't witnessed a great enough
> number to
> sensibly say what a norm would be. I certainly haven't seen a person
> hold
> two pens at once though. The scribes I've seen (maybe 4 I watched
> closely)
> were pragmatic in their writing, when a red word occurred they would
> put down
> the black brush and pick up the red and write the word. While the
> utensil
> was still in hand they would go back and add red dots or strokes
> where they
> thought it was needed. If no red words occurred (usually one every
> sentence
> or two depending upon the material) they would continue writing in
> black
> until the end of a sentence or section and stop there to change pens
> to go
> back and update punctuation or tonal marks. Again, I wouldn't draw
> any
> significant conclusions from this.
>
> I don't believe extra space is considered for adding red marks later,
> the
> red is allowed to bleed over the black. Trying to reproduce the
> practice
> with fonts though I have used an enlarged version of 1362 because the
> result
> looked much clearer. The original intention was lost when keeping
> the original
> proportions. My thought at the time was that it was just a natural
> adjustment
> that one makes when going from ink and paper to computer typography,
> the
> goal being that we try to improve upon what the hand can do without
> losing
> the essence of it.
>
> /Daniel
>
>
Resending this email because for some reason my membership in the
Unicode list got deleted.
=====
Dave Possin
Globalization Consultant
www.Welocalize.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 05 2002 - 11:54:22 EDT