On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...> wrote:
>  (How did a lambda in the Subject line become a capital E dieresis, btw?)

Character 0xCB (decimal 203) is Lambda in ISO-8859-7/Windows-1253 but
E-diaeresis in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252; I'm sure the reason is related
to that.


--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> I wonder how many Greek and Russian customers believe
> that the company's name is a grim "Kill". :-)

This reminds me that some hyper-sensitive people complained that the
name KIA is offensive to war veterans (particularly those of the
Korean War) because it is a common abbreviation for Killed In Action.

--
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:47:48 -0400, Marco Cimarosti
> <marco_cimarosti@...> wrote a nice message, including:
>
> > I wonder how many Greek and Russian customers believe that the
company's
> > name is a grim "Kill". :-)
>
> I've had the same thought for some time, seeing the logo and saying
"Kil"
> to myself sotto voce.

I say it to myself that way as well.

As Adecco displays its name with a final medial sigma, I tend to read
its name as a drawled 'Adex'.

Richard.

Saw this item via an alert for something else and thought it might be
of interest:

http://www.montsame.mn/index.php?option=com_news&task=news_detail&tab=200803&ne=\
2156
М�д�� М�д�� » English news » Education
MONGOLIAN SCRIPT TEACHERS SET UP UNION
2008-03-24 16:31:45 |   |  Х�вл�х |  �айздаа илг��х |

                 Ulaanbaatar, /MONTSAME/. Teaching the Mongolian script
in higher and secondary schools professionals have set up a National
Association of Mongolian Script Teachers.
                 The main task of the association, established in
context of the UN-declared International Year of Languages, is to form
in the youth a respect towards national language and culture and to
further the implementation of the law on state language passed by the
State Great Khural.
                 A teacher of School of Mongolian Language Studies at
the Mongolian State University, J.Bat-Ireedui has elected the
president of the National Association, and a linguist of the Institute
of Education, D.Battogtokh - the sxecutive director. The association
pursues an aim to include the Mongolian language examination into the
compulsory ones taken for enrolling in higher schools.
Ya.Indra
16.16

© Copyright 2007. Developed by "ECM" LLC. All Rights Reserved.

**************************** Disclaimer ******************************
Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section
107, this material is distributed without profit for research and
educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material posted
to this list for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.
Content: The sender does not vouch for the veracity nor the accuracy
of the contents of this message, which are the sole responsibility of
the copyright owner. Also, the sender does not necessarily agree or
disagree with any opinions that are expressed in this message.
**********************************************************************

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:15:37 -0400, Philip Newton
<philip.newton@...> wrote:

> Character 0xCB (decimal 203) is Lambda in ISO-8859-7/Windows-1253 but
> E-diaeresis in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252; I'm sure the reason is related
> to that.

Thank you!
Sorry for a delayed acknowledgment.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley
Waltham, Mass.
The weapon China fears most:
A Super-Soakerâ„¢. (That's a
high-powered toy water gun,
for people in other countries.)

I was looking at some Thai crosswords, and I wondered what scripts
people do crosswords in.  In Thai crosswords, the items in the squares
are preposed vowels, postposed vowels, and consonants along with
associated marks above and below (vowels above, vowels below, tone
marks, consonant killer).  You can find a good example on line at
http://www.naewna.com/news.asp?ID=91533 (the answer is at the bottom,
upside down), though the grids are often notched for the marks above
and below as at
<http://kullastree.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=350&Itemid\
=50>

.)

What go in the letter squares in other scripts?  I would guess that
the items in the squares were aksharas in most Indic scripts, but I
might be wrong.  For example, do Tamil crosswords, if they exist, work
like Thai crosswords?

Richard.

Does anyone know what happened to the LangMaker site? The last post
that I am able to see is from January 2008.

B. J.

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

> What go in the letter squares in other scripts?  I would guess that
> the items in the squares were aksharas in most Indic scripts, but I
> might be wrong.

Well, Kanarese crosswords seem to work by aksharas - example at
http://www.ourkarnataka.com/shabdharathna/shabdharathna2.htm with
answer at http://www.ourkarnataka.com/shabdharathna/shabdharathna3.htm
.  Unfortunately, you have to install a hack font (Baraha Kan New,
file brhkannw.ttf, available from
http://www.dharwad.com/nimmaputa/#kannada ) to slot the answers into
the grid.

Richard.

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:
>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@> wrote:
>
> > What go in the letter squares in other scripts?  I would guess that
> > the items in the squares were aksharas in most Indic scripts, but I
> > might be wrong.
>
> Well, Kanarese crosswords seem to work by aksharas - example at
> http://www.ourkarnataka.com/shabdharathna/shabdharathna2.htm with
> answer at http://www.ourkarnataka.com/shabdharathna/shabdharathna3.htm

Hebrew crosswords work as you might expect, with just the consonants.
  Since spelling isn't completely fixed in Hebrew, clues sometimes will
note that a word is to be filled in with "full" or "deficient"
spelling, i.e. with or without matres lectionis.

I suppose in theory Arabic could do the same, but would it even be
legible with all the letters in isolated form?  It's annoying enough
in Hebrew with all letters in non-final form.

~mark

I need a Unicode font for Armenian. Unfortunately _every_ usable Armenian font I
find at various sites omits the Armenian letter lower-case h; they simply have a
roman h in that slot.

(I didn't look at monospaced or monoline sans serif fonts, because they are
hardly typical Armenian. And I can't download the Titus package of Indo-European
fonts -- even to discover whether it has a proper h -- because I can't swear
that they will never be used for commercial purposes.) --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Peter,

>I need a Unicode font for Armenian. Unfortunately _every_ usable
>Armenian font I find at various sites omits the Armenian letter
>lower-case h; they simply have a roman h in that slot.

I know nothing about Armenian, but this page has a number of Armenian
fonts on it:
http://chanae.walon.org/pub/ttf/armenian/

I looked at erevan.zip and that one has the roman h. Then I checked
grginor.zip and matenagir.zip and both of those have the h the way the
Unicode charts display it. I didn't check any of the others.

Hope this helps,
Lorna


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thank you -- I hadn't found that page. It's amusing that its contact language
for roman-readers is ... Romanian!

grginor is the only one on the page that isn't a display font, that could be
used for actual text, so it's fortunate that it's one of the ones that didn't
copy whoever made the original omission. --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...



----- Original Message ----
From: "Lorna_Priest@..." <Lorna_Priest@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 12:56:43 PM
Subject: Re: Armenian Unicode font


Peter,

>I need a Unicode font for Armenian. Unfortunately _every_ usable
>Armenian font I find at various sites omits the Armenian letter
>lower-case h; they simply have a roman h in that slot.

I know nothing about Armenian, but this page has a number of Armenian
fonts on it:
http://chanae. walon.org/ pub/ttf/armenian /

I looked at erevan.zip and that one has the roman h. Then I checked
grginor.zip and matenagir.zip and both of those have the h the way the
Unicode charts display it. I didn't check any of the others.

Hope this helps,
Lorna

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Thank you -- I hadn't found that page.
  > It's amusing that its contact language for roman-readers is ... Romanian!

Sure it's not Walloon?

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.ogre.nu
"How'd ya like to climb this high without no mountain?" --Porky Pine

I don't think I've ever seen Walloon orthography.

I believe I've just seen your name, though, while I've been hunting for Unicode
fonts. --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...


----- Original Message ----
From: Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 1:05:17 AM
Subject: Re: Armenian Unicode font


Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Thank you -- I hadn't found that page.
> It's amusing that its contact language for roman-readers is ... Romanian!

Sure it's not Walloon?

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.ogre.nu
"How'd ya like to climb this high without no mountain?" --Porky Pine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I've downloaded several fonts that are supposed to include Glagolitic according
to the new Unicode standard 5.0 or even 5.1, and I cannot see them, either in XP
Pro's (SP2) Character Map or in Word2003's Insert Symbol.

Is this because I need some sort of add-in to update Windows for the additions?
Or what?
Also, the Combining Diacritics don't combine paricularly well with narrow
letters in Word. Will this be fixed in an Open Type-savvy application like
InDesign? Do I need to retype them when I flow the text into InDesign, or will
it happen automatically?--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The use of combining diacritics with a script is dependent on Uniscribe
supporting the appropriate features for the scripts required.

Word is OpenType savvy enough to handle combining diacritics. With writing
scripts like Latin and Cyrillic, these scripts will need to be treated as
complex scripts, so complex script support needs to be installed in Windows XP
SP2

You will need to install OpenType fonts that have use the mark and mkmk features
for the appropriate script.

For Latin and Cyrillic there are a number of fonts including Charis SIL

The main issue is whether the base character and diacritic(s) combinations you
require have are supported by the particular font you use.

I have not tried InDesign CS3 yet to determine if combining diacritic support is
present.

Earlier versions do not support combining diacritics.

Microsoft and Adobe seem to have concentrated on implementing different parts of
the OpenType specification.

The alternative is to use an OpenType savvy application like XeTeX

----- Original Message ----

Also, the Combining Diacritics don't combine paricularly well with narrow
letters in Word. Will this be fixed in an Open Type-savvy application like
InDesign? Do I need to retype them when I flow the text into InDesign, or will
it happen automatically?--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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       Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
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qalam@yahoogroups.com wrote on 06/24/2008 07:11:56 AM:

> I've downloaded several fonts that are supposed to include
> Glagolitic according to the new Unicode standard 5.0 or even 5.1,
> and I cannot see them, either in XP Pro's (SP2) Character Map or in
> Word2003's Insert Symbol.

Since Andrew answered the other question, I'll try this one. I have found
that Windows Character map on XP and Office 2003 only recognize blocks
that were there in earlier versions (maybe Unicode 4.1). I don't know how
consistent this is (i.e. I haven't checked all the blocks) but I know it
is irritating to me and disconcerting to those who aren't aware of the
problem. The fonts probably do have those character sets and you can still
access them, either through a keyboard or through direct entry. In Word
2003 you can type the unicode codepoint, say 0259, select "0259" and type
<ALT>X. That should give you the schwa. Another useful tool is Richard
Ishida's character picker where you can choose your block and then choose
characters, then copy and paste the text into your application. However,
it doesn't look like it has all the blocks.
http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/armenian/

Lorna


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:05:17 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> Thank you -- I hadn't found that page.
>  > It's amusing that its contact language for roman-readers is ...
> Romanian!
>
> Sure it's not Walloon?

Note the word "pådje"; that seems to be Wallonian.

I tried Wikipedia, first, and saw that its orthography hasn't been
standardized.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walloon_language>, also
<http://wa.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwaisse_pådje>

Following references on the English-lang. page, I found a Web site with
    links to a lot of text in Wallonian:
<http://rifondou.walon.org/rif-txt.html#engl>

HTH.

Regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley
Waltham, Mass.
{Warning: politics: } The real McCain:
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/3l4gkc>

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> I believe I've just seen your name, though, while I've been hunting for
Unicode fonts. --

Oh?  I wnoder where.  My name does show up in quite a lot of places,
in blog comments and the like.

--
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/

No, at some link from the "Japanese Unicode Gallery," the one that didn't know
about the page of Armenian fonts, to some download source or other.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 1:39:17 PM
Subject: Re: Armenian Unicode font

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> I believe I've just seen your name, though, while I've been hunting for
Unicode fonts. --

Oh? I wnoder where. My name does show up in quite a lot of places,
in blog comments and the like.
--
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre. nu/

Ishida doesn't have a "picker" for Glagolitic, but I found his master utility
that provides far more information about penguins than anyone could possibly
want, and used it to tediously type all the codes for the Glagolitic letters
into a table column; from there I'll be able to transfer them to the text as
needed.

Thanks for the reference! 
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: "Lorna_Priest@..." <Lorna_Priest@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:26:09 AM
Subject: Re: Glagolitic Unicode font

qalam@yahoogroups. com wrote on 06/24/2008 07:11:56 AM:

> I've downloaded several fonts that are supposed to include
> Glagolitic according to the new Unicode standard 5.0 or even 5.1,
> and I cannot see them, either in XP Pro's (SP2) Character Map or in
> Word2003's Insert Symbol.

Since Andrew answered the other question, I'll try this one. I have found
that Windows Character map on XP and Office 2003 only recognize blocks
that were there in earlier versions (maybe Unicode 4.1). I don't know how
consistent this is (i.e. I haven't checked all the blocks) but I know it
is irritating to me and disconcerting to those who aren't aware of the
problem. The fonts probably do have those character sets and you can still
access them, either through a keyboard or through direct entry. In Word
2003 you can type the unicode codepoint, say 0259, select "0259" and type
<ALT>X. That should give you the schwa. Another useful tool is Richard
Ishida's character picker where you can choose your block and then choose
characters, then copy and paste the text into your application. However,
it doesn't look like it has all the blocks.
http://people. w3.org/rishida/ scripts/pickers/ armenian/

Lorna

To add to Lorna's comments, its the same on Vista.

Essentially Windows Character Map is limited to a subset of the BMP.

You many want to look at alternative character map tools.

Keyman Desktop 7.0 comes with its own character map. I tend to find this quite
useful. Just change the font the character map uses to a suitable font. And
filter the character map using the term glagolitic to get the necessary
characters.

Alternative, there is BabelMap -
http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html

Either of these tools should do what you need to do.

Andrew

----- Original Message ----
From: "Lorna_Priest@..." <Lorna_Priest@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, 25 June, 2008 1:26:09 AM
Subject: Re: Glagolitic Unicode font

qalam@yahoogroups.com wrote on 06/24/2008 07:11:56 AM:

> I've downloaded several fonts that are supposed to include
> Glagolitic according to the new Unicode standard 5.0 or even 5.1,
> and I cannot see them, either in XP Pro's (SP2) Character Map or in
> Word2003's Insert Symbol.

Since Andrew answered the other question, I'll try this one. I have found
that Windows Character map on XP and Office 2003 only recognize blocks
that were there in earlier versions (maybe Unicode 4.1). I don't know how
consistent this is (i.e. I haven't checked all the blocks) but I know it
is irritating to me and disconcerting to those who aren't aware of the
problem. The fonts probably do have those character sets and you can still
access them, either through a keyboard or through direct entry. In Word
2003 you can type the unicode codepoint, say 0259, select "0259" and type
<ALT>X. That should give you the schwa. Another useful tool is Richard
Ishida's character picker where you can choose your block and then choose
characters, then copy and paste the text into your application. However,
it doesn't look like it has all the blocks.
http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/armenian/

Lorna


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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For those who are unaware, I guess Peter is  referring to UniView
http://rishida.net/scripts/uniview/?block=glagolitic



Just thought I'd check that you're aware that you can double-click on
characters in left lower panel to add them quickly to the Cut&paste field
above (ie. works rather like a picker, but for any Unicode block).  (The
main purpose of the separate pickers is to arrange characters so that people
unfamiliar with the script can find them more easily.)



RI



============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/





From: qalam@yahoogroups.com [mailto:qalam@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Peter T. Daniels
Sent: 24 June 2008 21:34
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Glagolitic Unicode font



Ishida doesn't have a "picker" for Glagolitic, but I found his master
utility that provides far more information about penguins than anyone could
possibly want, and used it to tediously type all the codes for the
Glagolitic letters into a table column; from there I'll be able to transfer
them to the text as needed.

Thanks for the reference!
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@... <mailto:grammatim%40verizon.net>

----- Original Message ----
From: "Lorna_Priest@... <mailto:Lorna_Priest%40sil.org> "
<Lorna_Priest@... <mailto:Lorna_Priest%40sil.org> >
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com <mailto:qalam%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:26:09 AM
Subject: Re: Glagolitic Unicode font

qalam@yahoogroups. com wrote on 06/24/2008 07:11:56 AM:

> I've downloaded several fonts that are supposed to include
> Glagolitic according to the new Unicode standard 5.0 or even 5.1,
> and I cannot see them, either in XP Pro's (SP2) Character Map or in
> Word2003's Insert Symbol.

Since Andrew answered the other question, I'll try this one. I have found
that Windows Character map on XP and Office 2003 only recognize blocks
that were there in earlier versions (maybe Unicode 4.1). I don't know how
consistent this is (i.e. I haven't checked all the blocks) but I know it
is irritating to me and disconcerting to those who aren't aware of the
problem. The fonts probably do have those character sets and you can still
access them, either through a keyboard or through direct entry. In Word
2003 you can type the unicode codepoint, say 0259, select "0259" and type
<ALT>X. That should give you the schwa. Another useful tool is Richard
Ishida's character picker where you can choose your block and then choose
characters, then copy and paste the text into your application. However,
it doesn't look like it has all the blocks.
http://people. w3.org/rishida/ scripts/pickers/ armenian/

Lorna





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Does anyone know where to find the font SamyakSans.ttf? It covers a number of
Indic scripts. Every link for it is to a defunct page at "gnowledge.org."
 --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

qalam@yahoogroups.com wrote on 06/25/2008 07:59:29 AM:

> Does anyone know where to find the font SamyakSans.ttf? It covers a
> number of Indic scripts. Every link for it is to a defunct page at
> "gnowledge.org."

Are you looking specifically for the Sans serif font? You can download
Samyak here: http://sarovar.org/projects/samyak/ but it doesn't include
the sans serif font.

Lorna


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Someone emailed me a link to an archived version of the gnowledge page, whose
old link for both versions of Samyak worked (the Unicode Gallery is not aware of
the non-Sans variety) -- and also sent a couple other Indic omnibus fonts that
might look nicer (I'll have to print out samples in them all to choose which
ones to use).

Thank you! --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: "Lorna_Priest@..." <Lorna_Priest@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 6:30:58 PM
Subject: Re: samyak

qalam@yahoogroups. com wrote on 06/25/2008 07:59:29 AM:

> Does anyone know where to find the font SamyakSans.ttf? It covers a
> number of Indic scripts. Every link for it is to a defunct page at
> "gnowledge.org. "

Are you looking specifically for the Sans serif font? You can download
Samyak here: http://sarovar. org/projects/ samyak/ but it doesn't include
the sans serif font.

Lorna

> qalam@yahoogroups.com wrote on 06/25/2008 07:59:29 AM:
>
> > Does anyone know where to find the font SamyakSans.ttf? It covers a
> > number of Indic scripts. Every link for it is to a defunct page at
> > "gnowledge.org."

Want something that used to be on the internet? The Wayback machine is your
friend...

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://zope.gnowledge.org/Gnoware/localization/Samy\
akSans_Font/new/SamyakSans.ttf

Regards,

    Tim

Dear Qalamites,

While not strictly on-topic, this message (a reply to a message I'd sent) seemed
to be of uncommon interest. Mr. Hosny is one of the people who are localizing
the
XO (One Laptop Per Child -- OLPC computer) software and (perhaps) firmware.
Perhaps it's being excessively cautious, but I have deleted his e-mail address
as a courtesy.

I fairly recently joined the Localization list at OLPC, and in response to a
question, offered a rather-long message describing what's involved in
working with RtoL, Arabic, and other RtoL scripts. I was out of date, and
the replies were most courteous; perhaps the message was not useless.

----- Original Message -----
From: Khaled Hosny
To: Nicholas Bodley nbodley@...>
Sent: Wed Jul 30 18:12
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Localization] Arabic Projects

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 01:09:35PM -0400, Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> On Wed Jul 30 11:44 , Khaled Hosny  sent:

[KH]
> >Arabic typewriters used what so called "Simplified Arabic script" where
> >each letter has only 2 forms (on used as isolated and final, and the
> >other as initial and medial) reducing the number of needed glyph while
> >remaining acceptably readable.

[nb]
> Most interesting! Did the Shift key select the other form for a given letter?
> For such people as students of writing systems and typography, it would be
good
> to have some images of typewritten Arabic on the Web.

Yes, shift used to select the isolated/final form, unfortunately I
couldn't find such samples on the web (I should remove the dust from my
father's typewriter and make some samples).

[KH]
> >If by "mechanically" you mean metal type,

[nb]
> I did.

[KH]
> >then Arabic printing houses as early as 1800's produced very carefully
typeset
> >Arabic books that we yet to have a computer system that can imitate.

[nb]
> That's just fascinating. I would not have thought it possible. I do hope that
> somebody has saved a few fonts of type from that period. One would think that
> there was quite a large number of different sorts (glyphs) in a given
typeface.
> As well, one wonders whether the body of each piece was only a rectangle, or
> whether some more sophisticated scheme was worked out.

They used extensive sets of hundreds of glyphs with tens of contextual variants
of each glyph.

Here are two scans from a Mushaf printed in 1924 using metal type, this
is one of the finest metal typesetted books.
http://www.tafsir.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=850&stc=1&d=1180677875
http://www.tafsir.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=851&stc=1&d=1180678163
(Note that Sura heads are calligraphed while the body of the page is
composed).

[I looked up some definitions: A Mushaf is apparently the Qur'an,
bound in one volume.
[Tafsir refers to commentaries on the Qur'an. Editing the URL to substitute
a few other 3-digit numbers in place of "850" and "851" brought up some
  pages, completely in Arabic, as well as .doc-formatted files
that seemed to render quite well in a recent version of OpenOffice.org for
Windows XP SP2.
[Sura, also Surah -- pl. Suar or Suwar, are chapters of the Qur'an. -- nb]]]

[nb]
> I think these details would be of interest to subscribers to the Qalam mailing
> list on yahoogroups.com. That list (only sporadically active) is for people
> interested in writing systems, and sometimes branches out a bit into
linguistics
> and typography.
>
> Perhaps I could forward your message to that list, with your permission (also
> with OLPC's permission).

Of course you can :)

Regards,
  Khaled

--
  Khaled Hosny
  Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team

(If you see duplicate[s] of this message, I apologize.
This Web mail software is not professional, although
the rest of Speakeasy's services are very good. --nb)

--
Nicholas Bodley
Waltham, Mass.
Sent from Speakeasy.net web mail



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

A Selectric ball carried 92 glyphs, and they were very cleverly designed. Arabic
instructional materials from the 1970s were frequently typed that way (see the
Michigan materials -- writing in light blue, first-year 3v. in orange,
second-year 2v. in green).


These days, Windows and Word have no trouble typing in Arabic (and Persian and
Urdu, at least) with no difficulty at all. And you don't have to buy anything
extra.
--
Peter T. Daniels                 grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----

From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Cc: loopback-sent <nbodley@...>
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:18:00 PM
Subject: Fwd: Typeset and typewritten Arabic before computer typesetting



Dear Qalamites,

While not strictly on-topic, this message (a reply to a message I'd sent) seemed
to be of uncommon interest. Mr. Hosny is one of the people who are localizing
the
XO (One Laptop Per Child -- OLPC computer) software and (perhaps) firmware.
Perhaps it's being excessively cautious, but I have deleted his e-mail address
as a courtesy.

I fairly recently joined the Localization list at OLPC, and in response to a
question, offered a rather-long message describing what's involved in
working with RtoL, Arabic, and other RtoL scripts. I was out of date, and
the replies were most courteous; perhaps the message was not useless.

----- Original Message -----
From: Khaled Hosny
To: Nicholas Bodley nbodley@speakeasy. net>
Sent: Wed Jul 30 18:12
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Localization] Arabic Projects

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 01:09:35PM -0400, Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> On Wed Jul 30 11:44 , Khaled Hosny  sent:

[KH]
> >Arabic typewriters used what so called "Simplified Arabic script" where
> >each letter has only 2 forms (on used as isolated and final, and the
> >other as initial and medial) reducing the number of needed glyph while
> >remaining acceptably readable.

[nb]
> Most interesting! Did the Shift key select the other form for a given letter?
> For such people as students of writing systems and typography, it would be
good
> to have some images of typewritten Arabic on the Web.

Yes, shift used to select the isolated/final form, unfortunately I
couldn't find such samples on the web (I should remove the dust from my
father's typewriter and make some samples).

[KH]
> >If by "mechanically" you mean metal type,

[nb]
> I did.

[KH]
> >then Arabic printing houses as early as 1800's produced very carefully
typeset
> >Arabic books that we yet to have a computer system that can imitate.

[nb]
> That's just fascinating. I would not have thought it possible. I do hope that
> somebody has saved a few fonts of type from that period. One would think that
> there was quite a large number of different sorts (glyphs) in a given
typeface.
> As well, one wonders whether the body of each piece was only a rectangle, or
> whether some more sophisticated scheme was worked out.

They used extensive sets of hundreds of glyphs with tens of contextual variants
of each glyph.

Here are two scans from a Mushaf printed in 1924 using metal type, this
is one of the finest metal typesetted books.
http://www.tafsir. org/vb/attachmen t.php?attachment id=850&stc= 1&d=1180677875
http://www.tafsir. org/vb/attachmen t.php?attachment id=851&stc= 1&d=1180678163
(Note that Sura heads are calligraphed while the body of the page is
composed).

[I looked up some definitions: A Mushaf is apparently the Qur'an,
bound in one volume.
[Tafsir refers to commentaries on the Qur'an. Editing the URL to substitute
a few other 3-digit numbers in place of "850" and "851" brought up some
pages, completely in Arabic, as well as .doc-formatted files
that seemed to render quite well in a recent version of OpenOffice.org for
Windows XP SP2.
[Sura, also Surah -- pl. Suar or Suwar, are chapters of the Qur'an. -- nb]]]

[nb]
> I think these details would be of interest to subscribers to the Qalam mailing
> list on yahoogroups. com. That list (only sporadically active) is for people
> interested in writing systems, and sometimes branches out a bit into
linguistics
> and typography.
>
> Perhaps I could forward your message to that list, with your permission (also
> with OLPC's permission).

Of course you can :)

Regards,
Khaled

--
Khaled Hosny
Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team

(If you see duplicate[s] of this message, I apologize.
This Web mail software is not professional, although
the rest of Speakeasy's services are very good. --nb)

--
Nicholas Bodley
Waltham, Mass.
Sent from Speakeasy.net web mail

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I am having difficulty interpreting some Hurrian 'transliterations'.  The
problem is that some readings are outside the Akkadian range, and the texts are
too recent for them to be given in the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
table at http://cdli.ucla.edu/methods/sign_reading.html .  There is some
supplementation in the Wiki page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform , and
I have of course used the Hurrian section in the 'World's Writing Systems',
though the latter suffers from some errors or typos.  (KU and GU are transposed
in the description of the representation of /o/, but not in the syllabary table,
and GI is transliterated as kè rather than ké.)

Where should I go for further information?  Fortunately I have stumbled over an
explanation of the vowel 'indices', eg. 'wa' subscripted with 'a' for the PI×A
sign (a ligature of the signs for wa and a).  However, I am currently thrown by
íw.  My first guess was that it is the same sign as íb, i.e. TUM.  As it occurs
in Mitt. i 81 (Mittani letter), it would make more sense for it to be IB, but in
WWS the example of the use of IB for /if/, at Mitt. i 83, uses plain iw in the
transliteration, as does the syllabary table.  If íw is actually IB, then what
is iw?

Richard.