I ran across this while looking for pronunciation of Georgian (TWWS
helped):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albanian_alphabet>
It has references.

It doesn't seem to be included in TWWS, but, I stopped looking after 15
minutes or so.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.

On Sun, 29 May 2011 08:11:49 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Vide infra.
>  --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
> To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:32:57 AM
> Subject: Re: World's last handwritten newspaper
>
[Following comment assumed to be from P.T.D.; markup failed in Opera
e-mail --nb]

> Lots of examples of ordinary (i.e. messy) handwriting; unfortunately the
> transcriptions into print use an especially ugly typewriter (or
> computer?) naskh-derived font.

That's most unfortunate. I don't think I've seen typeritten Arabic (it
must look rather awful), at least, not recently. Creating text for screens
differes from preparing it for print; print has much better resolution,
although recent screens in handheld devices (such as "smart phones",
really computers) have quite-good resolution.

Looking at the assignment of code points in Unicode for Arabic suggests
that the creators of Unicode have been rather slow to realize how
essential it is to use proper forms (initial, medial, final, and
stand-alone), to have shaping and joining, along with (at least for
Nasta`liq) positioning of (what? Phrases? Letter groups?).

More generally, I was delighted to realize that it was routine to see
"Mtskheta" rendered within recent e-mail text using Georgian:
მცხეთა.  I
had been curious, but not ambitious, to see which letters render that
wondrous "Mtskh" cluster; looking at the Unicode chart, they appear to be
[man] [can] [zen]*, which surprised this naïve amateur. (It seems that the
Unicode 3.0 code chart rendered [can] totally above the writing line, btw;
that confused me). This was on another mailing list
(howthingswork@yahoogroups.com), which has a liberal policy regarding
topics; we have just a very few amateur linguists, including Paul. K., who
is a senior engineering manager (or such) at Dell Computers. His knowledge
of other scripts and languages is better than mine; he's a Renaissance
man. The rest of the subscribers never complain; it's a civil list.
*Mkhreduli, of course.

[Patrick Chew]
> For other calligraphic handwriting (particularly Arabic, rather than
> Perso-spheric), please refer to:
>
>
<http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Arabic-Practical-Introduction-Script/dp/019815150\
0/>
>
>
> {The Review comments at Amazon are worth a look, as well. --nb}

[P.T.D. again]
> Yes, this has been the standard reference for half a century. Our Arabic
> T.A. in 1974, who was Egyptian, noted that Westerners write funny
> because they learned it from a book (i.e. naskh) and tried to get us to
> use ruq`a, but the way he used the chalk on the blackboard, as if it
> were a broad-edge pen, and very slowly with great pressure, made it look
> quite unfeasible.

He would have benefitted greatly from a good closed-circuit TV with a
large screen, using a qalam or other pen and paper. Unfortunately, such
equipment was quite costly, then.

> BTW the price they're asking is obscene.

I surely can't argue that point! OUP had a temporary discount on TWWS.
They priced it at 1/3 of its usual list; that's why I have a copy. I don't
begrudge theil list price; it must have been a bear to typeset and
proofread. (Speaking of proofreading, I was astonished when, quite some
time ago, I typed in one of the lesser-quality copies of The Chaos, by G.
Nolst Trenité. Proofreading it was unexpectedly difficult!)
(Regarding that poem, it's  a classic that I would recommend to any
Qalamite who doesn't know it. If you're not a native speaker of English,
its pronunciation is British; as well, you'll quickly note that it's a
remarkable collection of inconsistent pronunciations in English. The
history of its publication on the 'Net is interesting, as well.)

> Both <nasta`liq> and <ruq`ah> styles of Perso-Arabic have decent fonts
> available:
>
> <nasta`liq>: c.f.
> <http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/Fonts/nafeesNastaleeq.html>
> {There are several pages of interest at CRULP. --nb}
>
> <ruq`ah>: googling for "font ruqah" will pull up a number of links...
>
> Please also note that modern typsetting for Arabic script in a number of
> different languages has made extremely great advances and one of the best
> typesetting software available can be found at: http://www.decotype.com/,

[.P.T.D.]
> When including links in email, don't type punctuation after them without
> a space.

Mr. Chew did that for his other links, iirc. I habitually enclose them (as
did he) inside what have been called "bra" [<] and "ket" [>], using the
sometimes extremely-witty, informal Victor-Borge-like brief (monosyllabic,
if possible) verbalizations of just about any printable symbols in
"extended ASCII" at a minimum.
[These were only rarely officially recognized, i.e. "interrobang"
(U+203D), but when a programmer needed to speak specimens of code by
voice, they saved time. Typical terms were  "bang" for [!] and iirc
"splat" for [⌘] (U+2318, {caps -->} place of interest); they were
collected by Eric S. Raymond long ago. Imho, unfortunately, his list was
revised more than once to reduce the wittiness.]

Bruce Schneier, whose advice on security is particularly realistic in a
time when security theater (provided free at any airport check-in) is
commonplace, has a monthly newsletter that until recently, and perhaps
still, has a software bug of this category that disables every blessed
link he provides, and he provides a lot.

> where the Tasmeem product line has been developed to not only account for
> calligraphic styles of Persian and Arabic, but also allows for
> geolocal-specific stylistics and the capability for individual
> adjustments as felt to be necessary.
>
> WRT Indic fonting, it is not only Malayalam that has traditionally had
> 'stacking' consonants, but also other Dravidian (southern) scripts, as
> well as Hindi. With the advances made in typographical technology and the
> advent of Open Type Fonts, more fonts are available that accommodate
> traditional forms of typesetting/writing.
>
> regards,
> -Patrick Chew

[nb]
>   Patrick Chew was most helpful in offering his expertise on the topic.
{snips}

> Mr. Bodley:
>
> With regards to specimens of <nasta`liq>, please refer to:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Nastaliq-Persian-Hands-Present/dp/1568592132/
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
{snips}

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
{Micro-blog (non-Twitter) goes here}

The decipherment was accomplished long after the first edition of WWS was
published.
 --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...




________________________________
From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
To: Qalam <qalam@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 12:34:44 PM
Subject: The Caucasian Albanian alphabet

 
I ran across this while looking for pronunciation of Georgian (TWWS
helped):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albanian_alphabet>
It has references.

It doesn't seem to be included in TWWS, but, I stopped looking after 15
minutes or so.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.




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

Since font disinctions are lost somewhere between my screen and issuance by
qalam (which is apparently no longer moderated?), I will comment only up here.

The textbooks�everyone was using in the 1970s, the series by McCarus et al. from
Ann Arbor (year 1, 3 vols., orange; pronouncing and writing, blue; year 2, 2
vols., green) were typed with a Selectric.

(McCarus, BTW, is a Christian Arab -- his name Makarios went into Arabic and
came out in�roman looking Irish.)

From whenever Arabic first became part of Windows / Word, the forms were
correctly rendered, albeit with a limited number of ligatures (e.g. in Times New
Roman). In 2002 MS came up with the font "Arabic Typesetting," which has many
more ligatures as well as a roman designed to harmonize�with it in biscriptal
text. (I don't know whether it comes with Windows, or only with Office.)

No idea what Mac OS X does with any exotics.

Unicode ranges "Arabic Extended" A and B provide typable citation forms for the
"four" forms of each letter. They work in�Word, which doesn't always respect the
Unicode "Non-joiner" etc. items that are supposed to give you the
non-independent forms of letters.

--
no comment on Georgian or anything below

It's hard to find an Armenian�font these days that doesn't use a roman <h> for
its /h/ letter.
�--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...




________________________________
From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 12:52:39 PM
Subject: Re: World's last handwritten newspaper

�
On Sun, 29 May 2011 08:11:49 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Vide infra.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
> To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:32:57 AM
> Subject: Re: World's last handwritten newspaper
>
[Following comment assumed to be from P.T.D.; markup failed in Opera
e-mail --nb]

> Lots of examples of ordinary (i.e. messy) handwriting; unfortunately the
> transcriptions into print use an especially ugly typewriter (or
> computer?) naskh-derived font.

That's most unfortunate. I don't think I've seen typeritten Arabic (it
must look rather awful), at least, not recently. Creating text for screens
differes from preparing it for print; print has much better resolution,
although recent screens in handheld devices (such as "smart phones",
really computers) have quite-good resolution.

Looking at the assignment of code points in Unicode for Arabic suggests
that the creators of Unicode have been rather slow to realize how
essential it is to use proper forms (initial, medial, final, and
stand-alone), to have shaping and joining, along with (at least for
Nasta`liq) positioning of (what? Phrases? Letter groups?).

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

On 2011-5-29 09:52, Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> [ . . .  "bang" for [!] and iirc
> "splat" for [⌘] (U+2318, {caps -->} place of interest); . ..]

splat = asterisk.

> Bruce Schneier [...] has a monthly newsletter that until recently,
> and perhaps still, has a software bug of this category that disables
> every blessed link he provides, and he provides a lot.

Eh?  I've never noticed any trouble with Schneier's links.  Sampling my
archives back to 2005, I see that he consistently either puts the link
on a separate line or wraps it in <>.

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

On Sun, 29 May 2011 13:22:34 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> splat = asterisk.
Thanks! I had assumed that, and changed my mind.

> Eh? I've never noticed any trouble with Schneier's links. Sampling my
> archives back to 2005, I see that he consistently either puts the link
> on a separate line or wraps it in <>.

It might be a bug in Opera's e-mail, which is a love/hate part of the
browser (also a love/hate entity, itself).
He shortens longer links in his monthly newsletter, and formats them (as I
see them!) as "...htmlor http://shortlink.com" (so to speak). It's that
trailing "or", without any intervening character, that has confused Opera.
I haven't read him for a while, and the fairly-recent version of Opera
that I'm using seems to act better.

Thanks much!

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sarah's followers: Palindrones. They don't really
know which way they're facing.

On Sun, 29 May 2011 12:56:47 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> The decipherment was accomplished long after the first edition of WWS was
> published.
>  --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

Good to know; thank you. I rather doubt that a second edition is in the
works, but, one never knows!

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.

On Sun, 29 May 2011 13:08:51 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Since font disinctions are lost somewhere between my screen and issuance
> by qalam

If you post to Qalam via e-mail, and read it also in e-mail, that seems
somewhat puzzling.
Perchance, do you have different fonts specified for composing and viewing?

> (which is apparently no longer moderated?)

Seshat (Trismegistos, iirc) was rather quiet, most of the time. I hope
she's with us, and well.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
This space is not for commercial advertising
(^_^)

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:

> Looking at the assignment of code points in Unicode for Arabic suggests
> that the creators of Unicode have been rather slow to realize how
> essential it is to use proper forms (initial, medial, final, and
> stand-alone), to have shaping and joining, along with (at least for
> Nasta`liq) positioning of (what? Phrases? Letter groups?).

No.  The principle of Unicode is that the characters of the text are responsible
for conveying the basic text, and that it is the renderer's job, in conjunction
with any application-specific mark-up, to deal with such 'routine' matters as
shaping and joining.  Arabic ligatures, accented letters (as opposed to letters
plus accent characters) and Hangul syllables are hated compromises to allow the
use of limited rendering technologies, and such compound characters are no
longer added.  Thus, although new Arabic letters are added from time to time,
new 'presentation forms' are not.

Richard.

On Mon, 30 May 2011 10:48:07 -0400, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> Arabic ligatures, accented letters (as opposed to letters plus accent
> characters) and Hangul syllables are hated compromises to allow the use
> of limited rendering technologies

That's what I had thought. I was wrong about "Unicode being slow to
realize...".

> and such compound characters are no longer added. Thus, although new
> Arabic letters are added from time to time, new 'presentation forms' are
> not.

Richard, thank you for setting me straight. Amateurs can make significant
misjudgments.
I really appreciate being on a list that includes serious, respected
professionals.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sarah's followers: Palindrones. They don't really
know which way they're facing.

http://glyphs.webfoot.com/blog/

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:18:07 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> http://glyphs.webfoot.com/blog/

Ginger-peachy!

Of all that I've seen, so far, the Tamil "i" is my favorite. Surely
enough, when I scrolled down, there it was!

Many thanks.

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sign of a new trend? Looks really hopeful:
<www.fairindigo.com> Apparel made by
   decently-paid workers, fair traded.

What are the characters at the very top of this page?
http://www.hpianco.com/

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

On 06/22/2011 07:24 AM, Anton Sherwood wrote:
>
> What are the characters at the very top of this page?
> http://www.hpianco.com/
>

They look like EXTENDED ARABIC-INDIC DIGITs from here (U+06F0 - U+06F9):

88491552 - 88491553

~mark


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

Maybe a phone number? You'll find them repeated in a more conventional shape in
the third advertisement down in the right-hand column, next to the
telephone�operator's picture.
�--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...


>
>From: Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
>To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Wed, June 22, 2011 7:24:26 AM
>Subject: strange characters on Persian website
>
>�
>What are the characters at the very top of this page?
>http://www.hpianco.com/
>
>--
>Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

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

On 06/22/2011 07:34 AM, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
> On 06/22/2011 07:24 AM, Anton Sherwood wrote:
> >
> > What are the characters at the very top of this page?
> > http://www.hpianco.com/
> >
>
> They look like EXTENDED ARABIC-INDIC DIGITs from here (U+06F0 - U+06F9):
>
> 88491552 - 88491553
>
> ~mark
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
Huh.  I sent this using the extended Arabic-Indic digit characters, but
it looks like Yahoo groups' machinery somewhere along the line
translated them back to ordinary ASCII digits.  Not really right to
refer to them as "non-text portions of this message", but maybe that's
what that means...?  Go figure.

~mark


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

On 2011-6-22 05:11, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> Huh. I sent this using the extended Arabic-Indic digit characters,
> but it looks like Yahoo groups' machinery somewhere along the line
> translated them back to ordinary ASCII digits.

They looked right to me - the first time around.

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:41:53 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Maybe a phone number? You'll find them repeated in a more conventional
> shape in the third advertisement down in the right-hand column, next to
> the
> telephone operator's picture.

This query makes me realize that dilettantes such as yrs trly can be
stymied, maybe totally, by stylized versions of glyphs that native users
have no trouble understanding. As with the different styles of Arabic,
perhaps a comprehensive representation of the various writing systems
should try its best to include specimens of variant typefaces and styles.
It would be good to include "transcriptions/transliterations" of the
variants, typeset with standard, representative typefaces. Compiling such
a document is not for the unambitious, though.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sign of a new trend? Looks really hopeful:
<www.fairindigo.com> Apparel made by
   decently-paid workers, fair traded.

I was wondering about writing systems with such elaborate characters as
Tamil and Malayalam (perhaps not the best examples). Are those written
cursively, such as in personal letters?

=====

As well, I wonder what script is best adapted to muscles involved in
writing. I find, for instance, that it's far easier to write u's and w's
than n's and m's. For me, it takes extra effort to make an upstroke in an
[n], continue in a clockwise curve while keeping the stroke well above the
writing line, before finishing with the final down stroke. Perhaps I'm
simply lazy, not having practiced enough to strengthen muscles for those
movements. (The zigzag strokes of Kurrent come to mind.)

I've seen a few photos of cursive Hebrew graffiti, and that script looks
really easy to write.

My father, well educated in Tsarist Russia, wrote cursively in a clear
hand. He had studied Latin and Greek concurrently (for seven years!), so
he must not have been restricted to cursive Cyrillic. When he started to
write a lot of English, his cursive n's and m's looked much like u's and
w's, but he wrote straight overbars above them to remove ambiguity. I
adopted that practice. Apparently, it is done in parts of southeastern
Europe.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sign of a new trend? Looks really hopeful:
<www.fairindigo.com> Apparel made by
   decently-paid workers, fair traded.

On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:11:43 -0400, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@...> wrote:

> Huh. I sent this using the extended Arabic-Indic digit characters, but
> it looks like Yahoo groups' machinery somewhere along the line
> translated them back to ordinary ASCII digits. Not really right to
> refer to them as "non-text portions of this message", but maybe that's
> what that means...? Go figure.

Uh-oh. I18n is still quite unfinished. (One correspondent, until recently,
asked for ASCII only in e-mail. Mojibake is not totally restricted to
Japanese, either.)* I just posted a long semi-tutorial to another
Yahoogroup with specimens of both [Iranian] and [Arabian] numerals. Lord
only know how they will become mangled. Subscribers to that list might
well have ancient mail software, as well, or lack fonts. (Late thought:
The way is now clear for Unicode in URLs. I hope not, but we might be in
for a real mess, not to ignore creative fraud.)

*Years ago, I was discussing i18n in a mailing list. Somebody had used
Microsoft "smart quotes", and UTF-8 (I guess) had created brief mojibake
out of them. Each time the text with the corrupted punctuation was copied
in subsequent messages, the number of mojibake characters created by the
"smart quotes" doubled! I think the runaway stopped at 16 characters per
quote; end of thread, or somebody substituted ASCII.

I use Gucharmap (not by choice, but afaik it's the only comprehensive
Unicode-access application (GNOME) in openSUSE.)
I was able to transcribe the [Arabic] digits without trouble, but the
[Iranian] digits invoked the BiDi algorithm (! Arrgghh!)
When I copied them [en bloc](?) into the message text, their order was
reversed!

I'm not accustomed whatsoever to using the BiDi algorithm, and, while I do
know what's going on, it can be horribly confusing if one is changing
between directions, especially unexpectedly, where numbers simply must be
rendered (and entered) LtoR. I'm not guessing where/why BiDi popped up
when trying to transcribe the [Iranian] numerals. Surely, when only
numerals are involved, it seems to me that to invoke RtoL behavior is
simply wrong.

(Of course, I'm resorting to inaccurate and unofficial, if concise, ad hoc
usage to designate the two different numeral sets. I know that.)

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sign of a new trend? Looks really hopeful:
<www.fairindigo.com> Apparel made by
   decently-paid workers, fair traded.

The phenomena you describe relate to the writing implement you're using. Stylus
on clay?�Stylus on palm leaf? Flexible brush? Broad-edge pen? Flexible nib?
Pencil? Ballpoint? Felttip?
�--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...


>
>From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
>To: Qalam <qalam@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Thu, June 23, 2011 8:29:08 PM
>Subject: Script queries
>
>�
>I was wondering about writing systems with such elaborate characters as
>Tamil and Malayalam (perhaps not the best examples). Are those written
>cursively, such as in personal letters?
>
>=====
>
>As well, I wonder what script is best adapted to muscles involved in
>writing. I find, for instance, that it's far easier to write u's and w's
>than n's and m's. For me, it takes extra effort to make an upstroke in an
>[n], continue in a clockwise curve while keeping the stroke well above the
>writing line, before finishing with the final down stroke. Perhaps I'm
>simply lazy, not having practiced enough to strengthen muscles for those
>movements. (The zigzag strokes of Kurrent come to mind.)
>
>I've seen a few photos of cursive Hebrew graffiti, and that script looks
>really easy to write.
>
>My father, well educated in Tsarist Russia, wrote cursively in a clear
>hand. He had studied Latin and Greek concurrently (for seven years!), so
>he must not have been restricted to cursive Cyrillic. When he started to
>write a lot of English, his cursive n's and m's looked much like u's and
>w's, but he wrote straight overbars above them to remove ambiguity. I
>adopted that practice. Apparently, it is done in parts of southeastern
>Europe.
>
>Best regards,
>
>--
>Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.

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

On 2011-6-23 17:13, Nicholas Bodley wrote:
> This query makes me realize that dilettantes such as yrs trly can be
> stymied, maybe totally, by stylized versions of glyphs that native users
> have no trouble understanding. As with the different styles of Arabic,
> perhaps a comprehensive representation of the various writing systems
> should try its best to include specimens of variant typefaces and styles.

A foreigner cannot readily tell what's essential and what's analogous to
serifs.  (Hilariously, I've seen more than one Angerthas font in which
the dots separating groups of runes in Tolkien's chart are included as
part of an adjacent glyph.)

Nakanishi's slim /Writing Systems of the World/ goes some way to
addressing the problem, by illustrating each major script with the front
page of a newspaper: we thus get to see body type and typically two or
more varieties of display type.

The existence of Chinese texts printed at sizes such that I can't see
all the details implies that there are redundancies to which a practiced
reader is sensitive -- though they may defy description!

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:11:43 -0400, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@...> wrote:

> Uh-oh. I18n is still quite unfinished. (One correspondent, until recently,
> asked for ASCII only in e-mail. Mojibake is not totally restricted to
> Japanese, either.)* I just posted a long semi-tutorial to another
> Yahoogroup with specimens of both [Iranian] and [Arabian] numerals. Lord
> only know how they will become mangled. Subscribers to that list might
> well have ancient mail software, as well, or lack fonts. (Late thought:
> The way is now clear for Unicode in URLs. I hope not, but we might be in
> for a real mess, not to ignore creative fraud.)

> *Years ago, I was discussing i18n in a mailing list. Somebody had used
> Microsoft "smart quotes", and UTF-8 (I guess) had created brief mojibake
> out of them.

Sounds like Yahoo assuming text is Windows-1252 and destructively straightening
the quotes.

> I use Gucharmap (not by choice, but afaik it's the only comprehensive
> Unicode-access application (GNOME) in openSUSE.)
> I was able to transcribe the [Arabic] digits without trouble, but the
> [Iranian] digits invoked the BiDi algorithm (! Arrgghh!)
> When I copied them [en bloc](?) into the message text, their order was
> reversed!

They seem to work fine using LibreOffice (recently forked from OpenOffice by
distrusters of Oracle) and Firefox.  Incidentally LibreOffice (and so I presume
OpenOffice) can insert any character you have in some font - unlike the Windows
XP character map, which only accepted characters it thought were in Unicode.

There is one funny, though.  The 'extended' Arabic-Indic digits have a BiDi
classification of 'European Numerals', whereas the plain Arabic-Indic digits
have the BiDi classification of 'Arabic Numerals'.  The only case where I think
it should make a difference is if a higher-level protocol makes right-to-left
the default paragraph 'level'.  Then $ followed by digits should see $ on the
right for plain Arabic-Indic and on the left for extended Arabic-Indic.  At
least, that's what I calculate and what LibreOffice does.

> I'm not guessing where/why BiDi popped up
> when trying to transcribe the [Iranian] numerals. Surely, when only
> numerals are involved, it seems to me that to invoke RtoL behavior is
> simply wrong.

See above for bizarre effects.  I hope the BiDi rules can be made more
comprehensible - the current wording seems Byzantine.

Richard.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:12:45 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> The phenomena you describe relate to the writing implement you're using.
> Stylus on clay? Stylus on palm leaf? Flexible brush? Broad-edge pen?
> Flexible nib? Pencil? Ballpoint? Felttip?

Wonderful! Makes so much sense; fundamental. Thank you!
A person who has learned to use many such writing instruments has true
knowledge.

(P.S.: Notably excluded from the list: A computer mouse (one artist said
it's like trying to paint with a brick) and a computer graphics tablet;
the latter's response can be altered by programming (such as low-pass(?)
filtering (smoothed response) in Inkscape, iirc). P.P.S. I just recalled
de-facto-portable "airbrushes" -- spray paint cans, sometimes used for
public contests to see whose writings are the least legible.

Even ball pens have varying amounts of "drag" -- Parker Jotter
(traditional) points have a textured ball, iirc, and (relatively)
high-viscosity ink. While their ink supply is generous, the side force
needed to make a mark is perceptible. Gel-ink pens are a delight (but use
lots of ink). Parker has gel-ink refills, which are quite pleasant.

I've seen (and tried) porous foam-tip pens that seem to be something like
brushes.

(My current favorite is the Pilot G-2. (I bought refills at Staples, too.))

Pen technology (including ink management) has interested me for decades;
I'm resisting temptation to discourse further.

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
who remembers the Reynolds Aluminum ball
pen*, the Buck Ball, and banks forbidding
signatures on checks/cheques made with
ball pens. *$15, iirc; it didn't work.

On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:31:44 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> A foreigner cannot readily tell what's essential and what's analogous to
> serifs. (Hilariously, I've seen more than one Angerthas font in which
> the dots separating groups of runes in Tolkien's chart are included as
> part of an adjacent glyph.)

You remind me of a record store back when bins of 12-in (~30 cm) vinyl LPs
were browsable. One store had transcribed the name of an LP [publisher]by
hand lettering (all capitals, no less!) onto a tab at the top of a stiff
divider between LP's from diffecrent companies. IIrc, the company's logo
resembled this, typographically:
COMPAGNIE
FRANÇAISE
       DU SON
(Positioning of the 3rd line is approximate)

Well, that was transcribed onto the divider tab all in one line, or
possibly two. The cedilla of the Ç, carefully written, had migrated to the
top of the S!

Story has it (details unconfirmed) that when the rock band Mötley Crüe
began a show in Germany, the audience (in a cheerful mood) started
chanting the band's name, following German pronunciation. ( I find that
"...üe" awkward; of course, it's probably never found in German.)

Some time ago, I was horrified at the indiscriminate and utterly-ignorant
misuse of diacritics (meaningless decoratives) in the company name of
JĀSÖN [cosmetics]; wrote them a courteous letter, hard-hitting but polite.
(I have long forgetten what absurdity they originally had.)

> Nakanishi's slim /Writing Systems of the World/
Oh, my! I used to own a copy; hope I still have it. I loved that book. It
was a time decades before WWS.
(Full(er) name is Akira Nakanisihi; iirc, he is/was a well-to-do
businessman (publisher?) who has a private collection of manuscripts and
other specimens. Imho, he's an independent scholar. I just Googled on his
name -- ~2.8 million hits...)

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Dilettante independent scholar

On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:31:44 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> The existence of Chinese texts printed at sizes such that I can't see
> all the details implies that there are redundancies to which a practiced
> reader is sensitive -- though they may defy description!

I agree. I think the ability to read indistinct text uses processes that
we are probably, at best, only dimly aware of.
Your comment reminds me of the second volume of Unicode 1.0, which
contained the unified Han characters. The printing plates had been
over-inked (or wrongly exposed) to a fare-thee-well.

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Sign of a new trend? Looks really hopeful:
<www.fairindigo.com> Apparel made by
   decently-paid workers, fair traded.

On 2011-6-24 01:31, Anton Sherwood wrote:
> The existence of Chinese texts printed at sizes such that I can't see
> all the details implies that there are redundancies to which a practiced
> reader is sensitive -- though they may defy description!

After I sent that, it occurred to me that the phrase "all the details"
rather begs the question!  (A type designer might reasonably say that as
a layman I do not see all the details in large roman type, either.)
Let's say rather: such that I cannot count the strokes.

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang

There's a new book, apparently very readable and enjoyable, about fonts
(I still want to call them type faces...). I haven't seen a copy, yet, but
it looks promising. Try Googling on [just my type book]. Amazon asks a few
cents more than $15 US; shipping might be extra.

[ Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield ]

My best regards to all,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
who finds Georgia truly pleasant to use
for composing e-mail in Opera.

He was on NPR this morning (or yesterday morning?). He said strange things that
suggested this is not the best book about type one could imagine.

His favorite fonts are Georgia and Albertus, and he dislikes Helvetica. And he
has the upper-class-twit accent that turns r into w.
--
Peter T. Daniels                 grammatim@...

From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
>To: Qalam <qalam@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Sunday, September 4, 2011 8:48 PM
>Subject: Somewhat off-topic
>
>
> �
>
>� There's a new book, apparently very readable and enjoyable, about fonts
>(I still want to call them type faces...). I haven't seen a copy, yet, but
>it looks promising. Try Googling on [just my type book]. Amazon asks a few
>cents more than $15 US; shipping might be extra.
>
>[ Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield ]
>
>My best regards to all,
>
>--
>Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.

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

On Sun, 04 Sep 2011 22:38:51 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> He said strange things that suggested this is not the best book about
> type one could imagine.

Interesting! Thanks. Perhaps it's equivalent to Fletcher Pratt's _Secret
And Urgent_, a book about cryptography. It whetted interest in the field,
but apparently was a poor reference. David Kahn's _The Codebreakers_ was
much better, I'm almost sure.

Regarding Georgia, I dearly wish that it were the first choice for Web
pages that apparently default to Times New Roman, an awful screen font at
the default size. TNR might have been OK when a typical screen was 640 x
400, but at 1280 x 1024 it's ... well ... grim. (1600 x 1200 is almost
useless for text; its default size is just too small, at least for
75-year-old eyes.)

Btw, it seems to me that changing size in Verdana is equivalent to
changing among bitmapped fonts; this is not to denigrate all the work that
was done on it.

However, I don't want to pull the thread too far off-topic!

I'd welcome suggestions for a mailing list primarily concerned with
typography.

Best regards to all,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.