From jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl Fri Apr 1 06:20:02 2016 From: jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl (Janusz S. =?utf-8?Q?Bie=C5=84?=) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2016 13:20:02 +0200 Subject: Character Index In-Reply-To: <56FACFE2.5020702@ix.netcom.com> (Asmus Freytag's message of "Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:56:34 -0700") References: <5E5E396485A9426EBF716F6D141C9F70@DougEwell> <86h9fp3nj1.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FA0F55.5070704@ix.netcom.com> <86y49121po.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FAC84E.9080705@att.net> <56FACFE2.5020702@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <86egapwp7h.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> On Tue, Mar 29 2016 at 20:56 CEST, asmusf at ix.netcom.com writes: > On 3/29/2016 11:24 AM, Ken Whistler wrote: > > On 3/29/2016 12:16 AM, Janusz S. Bie? wrote: > > What about a simpler and more technical approach, like a character > index > with links to the relevant proposals? Doesn't such a thing > already exist > for internal use? > > > No, and it is exceedingly *non*-trivial to produce such an index. > > > This is an area where anybody can play. Not to ignore the issues and > complexities that Ken rightly points out, but the archive is > accessible and anyone could try their hands and data mining - but > would quickly discover that they would need actual manpower to curate > the results to be useful. [...] > Such effort would be most useful not in a generalized index, but in > describing certain collections of characters (for example Latin > Medievalist characters) because then it would be possible to collate > the information with other sources of character usage conventions for > a one-stop solution for anyone in the field. Both an index and the descriptions can coexist. Personally I think the index should be the primary source. The problem is to find or to desing an appropriate software which would allow to use the available manpower (probably provided by volunteers) in an efficient way. Best regards Janusz -- , Prof. dr hab. Janusz S. Bien - Uniwersytet Warszawski (Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej) Prof. Janusz S. Bien - University of Warsaw (Formal Linguistics Department) jsbien at uw.edu.pl, jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl, http://fleksem.klf.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/ From asmusf at ix.netcom.com Fri Apr 1 09:54:51 2016 From: asmusf at ix.netcom.com (Asmus Freytag (c)) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 07:54:51 -0700 Subject: Character Index In-Reply-To: <86egapwp7h.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> References: <5E5E396485A9426EBF716F6D141C9F70@DougEwell> <86h9fp3nj1.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FA0F55.5070704@ix.netcom.com> <86y49121po.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FAC84E.9080705@att.net> <56FACFE2.5020702@ix.netcom.com> <86egapwp7h.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> Message-ID: <56FE8BBB.9040800@ix.netcom.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl Fri Apr 1 12:47:10 2016 From: jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl (Janusz S. =?utf-8?Q?Bie=C5=84?=) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2016 19:47:10 +0200 Subject: Character Index In-Reply-To: <56FE8BBB.9040800@ix.netcom.com> (Asmus Freytag's message of "Fri, 1 Apr 2016 07:54:51 -0700") References: <5E5E396485A9426EBF716F6D141C9F70@DougEwell> <86h9fp3nj1.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FA0F55.5070704@ix.netcom.com> <86y49121po.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FAC84E.9080705@att.net> <56FACFE2.5020702@ix.netcom.com> <86egapwp7h.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> <56FE8BBB.9040800@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <86zitd43xd.fsf@mimuw.edu.pl> On Fri, Apr 01 2016 at 16:54 CEST, asmusf at ix.netcom.com writes: [...] > If you were truly interested in creating a resource like an index over > character descriptions in proposals, you would need to expect to > source your own merry gang of helpers and find a way to organize them. > The easiest way to motivate people is when the result is useful to > them. That's why I keep coming back with my suggestion for a focused > effort. My goal is from the very beginning to describe characters useful for encoding historical Polish texts, at least the most important and/or not obvious ones. My recent paper http://bc.klf.uw.edu.pl/480/ is in Polish, but you can have a look and be surprised by some characters needed to encode Polish texts and metatexts (linguistic or lexicographical descriptions). > > You could think of it as a pilot project. Rather than tackling all > possible characters Actually I never had such a full index in mind. > you would focus on some subset that shares some > commonality, perhaps Latin extensions. You would have to solve many of > the problems that Ken elaborated, but if they have an (at least) > acceptable solution, then you would have delivered something useful, > and provided a model on which others can build research into other > repertoires. > > I'll step out of this discussion now, because as much as I would have > wanted access to an index like you describe for another project I am > involved in, I don't have time or good ideas to contribute at this > moment. > > A./ > OK, I understand. I'm still looking for suggestions about a suitable software. An attempt to use BitBucket wiki appeared so impractical that I had to abort it after describing just a few characters: https://bitbucket.org/jsbien/unicode4polish/wiki/ Best regards Janusz -- , Prof. dr hab. Janusz S. Bien - Uniwersytet Warszawski (Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej) Prof. Janusz S. Bien - University of Warsaw (Formal Linguistics Department) jsbien at uw.edu.pl, jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl, http://fleksem.klf.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/ From johannes at bergerhausen.com Fri Apr 8 11:48:46 2016 From: johannes at bergerhausen.com (Johannes Bergerhausen) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 18:48:46 +0200 Subject: decode redesign Message-ID: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> Dear list, after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some bugs. It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different fonts). SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. We added confusables and informations about scripts from CLDR. There are texts by Dr. Deborah Anderson (SEI) about each script. For now it covers Unicode 6.0, but we are planning to update to 9.0 later this year. Please send bugreports to info at decodeunicode.org All the best, Johannes From asmusf at ix.netcom.com Fri Apr 8 12:20:52 2016 From: asmusf at ix.netcom.com (Asmus Freytag (c)) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 10:20:52 -0700 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> Message-ID: <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From magnus at bodin.org Fri Apr 8 12:39:01 2016 From: magnus at bodin.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Magnus_Bodin_=E2=98=80?=) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 19:39:01 +0200 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: Site and dns looks good here. $ dig a www.decodeunicode.org @ns.namespace4you.de ; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> a www.decodeunicode.org @ns.namespace4you.de ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18341 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.decodeunicode.org. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.decodeunicode.org. 3600 IN A 46.252.26.196 ;; Query time: 48 msec ;; SERVER: 80.67.16.124#53(80.67.16.124) ;; WHEN: Fri Apr 8 19:38:12 2016 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 55 $ dig a www.decodeunicode.org @ns2.namespace4you.de ; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> a www.decodeunicode.org @ns2.namespace4you.de ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6274 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.decodeunicode.org. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.decodeunicode.org. 3600 IN A 46.252.26.196 ;; Query time: 43 msec ;; SERVER: 193.223.77.3#53(193.223.77.3) ;; WHEN: Fri Apr 8 19:38:16 2016 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 55 On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 7:20 PM, Asmus Freytag (c) wrote: > On 4/8/2016 9:48 AM, Johannes Bergerhausen wrote: > > Dear list, > > after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org > > > the address with www is not found. > > A./ > > I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some bugs. > > It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. > > There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different fonts). > SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. > > We added confusables and informations about scripts from CLDR. > There are texts by Dr. Deborah Anderson (SEI) about each script. > > For now it covers Unicode 6.0, but we are planning to update to 9.0 later this year. > > Please send bugreports to info at decodeunicode.org > > All the best, > Johannes > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From verdy_p at wanadoo.fr Fri Apr 8 14:02:15 2016 From: verdy_p at wanadoo.fr (Philippe Verdy) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 21:02:15 +0200 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: I confirm, the site works. Even if ther's currently a bug "Something went wrong" when clicking on a combining diacritic (in all scripts). [Bug submitted via the contact address] 2016-04-08 19:20 GMT+02:00 Asmus Freytag (c) : > On 4/8/2016 9:48 AM, Johannes Bergerhausen wrote: > > Dear list, > > after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org > > > the address with www is not found. > > A./ > > I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some bugs. > > It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. > > There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different fonts). > SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. > > We added confusables and informations about scripts from CLDR. > There are texts by Dr. Deborah Anderson (SEI) about each script. > > For now it covers Unicode 6.0, but we are planning to update to 9.0 later this year. > > Please send bugreports to info at decodeunicode.org > > All the best, > Johannes > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From verdy_p at wanadoo.fr Fri Apr 8 14:14:49 2016 From: verdy_p at wanadoo.fr (Philippe Verdy) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 21:14:49 +0200 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> <5707E874.4040209@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: My email to signal the bug to the author of the site (at the indicated address) was not delivered: his mailbox is full (probably of junk mails). Time for him to redirect his contact email to a good mail provider that has support for filtering spam, to correct the issue that occurs on all combining diacritics. So Johannes, I hope you can still read my previous message from this list, but look at the state of your mailbox and find a solution to perform some cleanup ! 2016-04-08 21:02 GMT+02:00 Philippe Verdy : > I confirm, the site works. > Even if ther's currently a bug "Something went wrong" when clicking on a > combining diacritic (in all scripts). [Bug submitted via the contact > address] > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From unicode at acjs.net Sun Apr 10 08:28:33 2016 From: unicode at acjs.net (ACJ Unicode) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 15:28:33 +0200 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> Message-ID: <570A5501.20406@acjs.net> Op 8-4-2016 om 18:48 schreef Johannes Bergerhausen: > Dear list, > > after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org > I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some bugs. > > It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. > > There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different fonts). > SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. > > [...] Lovely resource, Johannes. Thanks! From alolita.sharma at gmail.com Sun Apr 10 10:37:45 2016 From: alolita.sharma at gmail.com (Alolita Sharma) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 08:37:45 -0700 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <570A5501.20406@acjs.net> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> <570A5501.20406@acjs.net> Message-ID: Johannes, decodeunicode.org is a great resource. Thanks for sharing and keeping up the site design! Best, Alolita On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 6:28 AM, ACJ Unicode wrote: > Op 8-4-2016 om 18:48 schreef Johannes Bergerhausen: > >> Dear list, >> >> after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org >> I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some >> bugs. >> >> It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. >> >> There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different >> fonts). >> SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. >> >> [...] >> > > Lovely resource, Johannes. Thanks! > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From verdy_p at wanadoo.fr Sun Apr 10 11:05:22 2016 From: verdy_p at wanadoo.fr (Philippe Verdy) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 18:05:22 +0200 Subject: decode redesign In-Reply-To: <570A5501.20406@acjs.net> References: <278E3B97-C062-41C5-80B4-A69AAC76DE4E@bergerhausen.com> <570A5501.20406@acjs.net> Message-ID: There's another bug visible directly on the home page: the codepoints in the "most viewed characters" (right column) are displaying random values, not matching the effective character name, glyph and link. 2016-04-10 15:28 GMT+02:00 ACJ Unicode : > Op 8-4-2016 om 18:48 schreef Johannes Bergerhausen: > >> Dear list, >> >> after 10 years it was time to redesign www.decodeunicode.org >> I am pleased to report that a beta is online now. There are still some >> bugs. >> >> It is responsive, so it works well on smart phones and tablets too. >> >> There are 109,242 free SVG images of all 6.0 glyphs (from 66 different >> fonts). >> SVG is vector based, so you can scale them. No pixel anymore. >> >> [...] >> > > Lovely resource, Johannes. Thanks! > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From doug at ewellic.org Tue Apr 12 13:23:19 2016 From: doug at ewellic.org (Doug Ewell) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 11:23:19 -0700 Subject: U.S. National Weather Service upgrades to ASCII Message-ID: <20160412112319.665a7a7059d7ee80bb4d670165c8327d.44a2a93dd0.wbe@email03.secureserver.net> http://www.noaa.gov/national-weather-service-will-stop-using-all-caps-its-forecasts Don't worry; you've got until May 11 to upgrade your ITA2-compliant equipment to support this new technological breakthrough. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ???? From verdy_p at wanadoo.fr Tue Apr 12 13:47:26 2016 From: verdy_p at wanadoo.fr (Philippe Verdy) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 20:47:26 +0200 Subject: U.S. National Weather Service upgrades to ASCII In-Reply-To: References: <20160412112319.665a7a7059d7ee80bb4d670165c8327d.44a2a93dd0.wbe@email03.secureserver.net> Message-ID: Wow! They name that technology "Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System"... Is plain ASCII "advanced"? Probably when compared to 5-bit or 6-bit Baudot. Is it "interactive" ? when it does not understand the languages that people actually use locally assuming they only use Basic English. Today, "interactive" means ready for the web and its standards (UTF-8 by default, not 7-bit ASCII). I hope that these labels could simply zapped and replaced by structured data whose localisation may be more easily converted to plain text in natural langages or using icons and graphics and also more easily "processed". And they would use better design for accessibility in general. Le 12 avr. 2016 20:33, "Doug Ewell" a ?crit : http://www.noaa.gov/national-weather-service-will-stop-using-all-caps-its-forecasts Don't worry; you've got until May 11 to upgrade your ITA2-compliant equipment to support this new technological breakthrough. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ???? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asmusf at ix.netcom.com Tue Apr 12 14:08:59 2016 From: asmusf at ix.netcom.com (Asmus Freytag (c)) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 12:08:59 -0700 Subject: U.S. National Weather Service upgrades to ASCII In-Reply-To: References: <20160412112319.665a7a7059d7ee80bb4d670165c8327d.44a2a93dd0.wbe@email03.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <570D47CB.8030007@ix.netcom.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From qsjn4ukr at gmail.com Tue Apr 26 04:43:22 2016 From: qsjn4ukr at gmail.com (QSJN 4 UKR) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:43:22 +0300 Subject: U.S. National Weather Service upgrades to ASCII In-Reply-To: <570D47CB.8030007@ix.netcom.com> References: <20160412112319.665a7a7059d7ee80bb4d670165c8327d.44a2a93dd0.wbe@email03.secureserver.net> <570D47CB.8030007@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: Is it possible to transmit mixed-case messages using the old old old 5-bit Baudot ITA2? The answer is https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-S.2/en This document in force since 1988... More than 30 days, I think. 2016-04-12 22:08 GMT+03:00, Asmus Freytag (c) : > On 4/12/2016 11:47 AM, Philippe Verdy wrote: >> >> Wow! They name that technology "Advanced Weather Interactive Processing >> System"... > > > The announcement is straight from "Dilbert" : ... Service Level Management > Process defines a life cycle of continuous improvement grounded in open > communication > > From alex.plantema at xs4all.nl Tue Apr 26 08:32:03 2016 From: alex.plantema at xs4all.nl (Alex Plantema) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 15:32:03 +0200 Subject: U.S. National Weather Service upgrades to ASCII References: <20160412112319.665a7a7059d7ee80bb4d670165c8327d.44a2a93dd0.wbe@email03.secureserver.net> <570D47CB.8030007@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <6AF2F223624B4048BE16F6BD2FE80A3A@p4> Op dinsdag 26 april 2016 11:43 schreef QSJN 4 UKR: > Is it possible to transmit mixed-case messages using the old old old > 5-bit Baudot ITA2? The answer is > https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-S.2/en > This document in force since 1988... More than 30 days, I think. At least they recognize my IPv6 address... Alex. From ken.shirriff at gmail.com Thu Apr 28 10:49:01 2016 From: ken.shirriff at gmail.com (Ken Shirriff) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 08:49:01 -0700 Subject: Klingon text in legal brief Message-ID: Since encoding Klingon in Unicode comes up occasionally, you might be amused to see a legal brief that was written partly in Klingon: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmetJxi-p0VM19nbUpyNXE0a28/view Details are here: http://conlang.org/axanar/ Ken -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dzo at bisharat.net Sat Apr 30 12:27:02 2016 From: dzo at bisharat.net (Don Osborn) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2016 13:27:02 -0400 Subject: Non-standard 8-bit fonts still in use In-Reply-To: <56204330.6010106@bisharat.net> References: <56204330.6010106@bisharat.net> Message-ID: <0cf8d7fb-d651-592a-c0fc-15e1cf77d87d@bisharat.net> Last October I posted about persistence of old modified/hacked 8-bit fonts, with an example from Mali. This is a quick follow up, with belated thanks to those who responded to that post on and off list, and a set of examples from China and Nigeria. I conclude below with some thoughts about what this says about dissemination of information about Unicode. First, a sequel to the original example of Bambara Arial, which shows a really bad outcome of use of a that very non-Unicode font in a Bambara translation of a hand-washing poster (put out during the recent ebola epidemic): http://niamey.blogspot.com/2015/11/corrected-bambara-poster-thinking-about.html Second, is a number of materials for Hausa speakers learning Chinese, in which modified fonts were used for Hausa boko text (with hooked letters) and Chinese pinyin text (with tone-marked vowels). These are mentioned in a pair of posts on the same blog about the growing number of Chinese - Hausa language materials: * http://niamey.blogspot.com/2016/04/sinanci-chinese-hausa-materials.html * http://niamey.blogspot.com/2016/04/more-on-sinanci-chinese-hausa.html For any interested in delving deeper, there are 3 PDF documents in particular, apparently from the beginning of three separate publications. Below are shortened links to the Google cached versions (these show the actual characters of the PDFs, and of course have links to the originals): * ?? Abin da Ke Ciki ("Table of contents," plus first chapter in elementary level text) http://is.gd/SdhRW4 * ?? ("Forward," plus what is evidently a first lesson on conversation) http://is.gd/t124Ti * ?? Gabatarwa ("Introduction," plus first lesson on pinyin) http://is.gd/t05cvF Although I've previously raised questions about non-Unicode text in PDFs, the issue with these is not PDF encoding, but rather non-standard fonts used in composing documents, which must be saved as PDFs in order to permit sharing, since those fonts make sharing as text/wordprocessor documents problematic (see the Bambara example above). The PDF documents appear fine, and would print as intended, but the underlying text prevents normal searches or reuse. It appears that the non standard fonts in the three documents mentioned include one from Nigeria for the Hausa boko (which may date to the mid-1990s), and one or more from China for the pinyin. The Chinese hanzi text appears not to have any problems. Dates on these documents are not clear except for one (??) which evidently was produced in 2010. Among the replies to my post last October, was the suggestion that input may be a reason for people creating documents with extended Latin or digraphs, and thinking only of products that an be read and printed, to stay with old familiar 8-bit solutions. Substituting characters such that the key for an otherwise unused character yields a hooked letter or a tone-marked vowel may be seen as sufficient for their purposes and easier than switching to Unicode and sorting out a new keyboard system. Or maybe Unicode is not fully understood. If the latter be the case, that would seem to have implications regarding dissemination of information about Unicode. "If you standardize it, they will adopt" certainly holds for industry and well-informed user communities (such as in open source software), but not necessarily for more localized initiatives. This is not to seek to assign blame in any way, but rather to point out what seems to be a persistent issue with long term costs in terms of usability of text in writing systems as diverse as Bambara, Hausa boko, and Chinese pinyin. Don Osborn On 10/15/2015 8:22 PM, Don Osborn wrote: > I was surprised to learn of continued reference to and presumably use > of 8-bit fonts modified two decades ago for the extended Latin > alphabets of Malian languages, and wondered if anyone has similar > observations in other countries. Or if there have been any recent > studies of adoption of Unicode fonts in the place of local 8-bit fonts > for extended Latin (or non-Latin) in local language computing. > > At various times in the past I have encountered the idea that local > languages with extended alphabets in Africa require special fonts > (that region being my main geographic area of experience with > multilingual computing), but assumed that this notion was fading away. > > See my recent blog post for a quick and by no means complete > discussion about this topic, which of course has to do with more than > just the fonts themselves: > http://niamey.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-secret-life-of-bambara-arial.html > > TIA for any feedback. > > Don Osborn > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lang.support at gmail.com Sat Apr 30 17:21:09 2016 From: lang.support at gmail.com (Andrew Cunningham) Date: Sun, 1 May 2016 08:21:09 +1000 Subject: Non-standard 8-bit fonts still in use In-Reply-To: <56204330.6010106@bisharat.net> References: <56204330.6010106@bisharat.net> Message-ID: Don, Most African communities I work with within diaspora are using Unicode. Although 8 bit legacy content is still in use. Probably the most use I see of legacy encodings is among the Karen languages. Sgaw Karen uses seem to still be using 8-bit fonts. There is a psuedo-Unicode solution but 8-bit fonts dominate still. The problem for Karen is that the default rendering for Unicode fonts isn't suitable. And locl support in applications has been lagging. The ideal Unicode font for Myanmar script would have somewhere between 8-10 language systems. Cross platform support is lacking. Currently best approach is a separate font for each language system. Andrew On Friday, 16 October 2015, Don Osborn wrote: > I was surprised to learn of continued reference to and presumably use of 8-bit fonts modified two decades ago for the extended Latin alphabets of Malian languages, and wondered if anyone has similar observations in other countries. Or if there have been any recent studies of adoption of Unicode fonts in the place of local 8-bit fonts for extended Latin (or non-Latin) in local language computing. > > At various times in the past I have encountered the idea that local languages with extended alphabets in Africa require special fonts (that region being my main geographic area of experience with multilingual computing), but assumed that this notion was fading away. > > See my recent blog post for a quick and by no means complete discussion about this topic, which of course has to do with more than just the fonts themselves: http://niamey.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-secret-life-of-bambara-arial.html > > TIA for any feedback. > > Don Osborn > > > -- Andrew Cunningham lang.support at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: