Re: [unicode] Re: Canadian aboriginal syllabics in vertical writing mode

On 5/1/2012 11:19 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
> It does not matter if sideways text can be read as words, or just as gibberish. Good practice and typographic design will not rotate syllabic text because of the inherent confusability.
>

Michael has a generally valid point. Rotating *small* snippets of Syllabics
text would be inherently confusing, because the entire script is built out
of a relatively small repertoire of geometrically shaped base letters, for
which many of the rotations and reflections turn them into distinct letters
with different readings. See the first example that Suzuki-san provided a
link for, which prominently has a KA a NU and a NI syllable, where these
3 fall into a rotational set. This is the Latin pbdq problem, but much more
inherent to the graphical structure of the glyphs.

However, I take issue with Michael's immediate trashing of the typography
of these two examples. The second example, in particular:

        http://www.cley.gov.nu.ca/pdf/Documentary%20Art%20Project_Inuk.pdf

is quite clearly part of the typesetting of something which could then be
folded into thirds as part of a hand-held piece of collateral -- a
little pamphlet.
And the rules for what is well-set on a pamphlet are rather different that
what makes sense on a unrotatable computer screen display, precisely
because the pamphlet is in your hands and can be--in fact is designed to
be--fiddled with and rotated manually. In such cases laying out text boxes
with arbitrary rotations is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

On the other hand, that Project Inuk pdf example then fails as a real
example
of vertical typesetting in the sense intended by TR 50, I think, because it
isn't *meant* to be read vertically.

Other examples of cases like this might be the printing of spines on
publications,
which also are often not meant to be read vertically.

--Ken
Received on Tue May 01 2012 - 14:36:59 CDT