<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Hi Val and List,<br>
I want to share what I think could be a positive move forward
with the ISWA fonts.<br>
<br>
Currently there is one for use with the graphite engine
developped by Eduardo Trápani. It works mainly with Firefox and
seems to be mainly intended for web. Graphite is a special rendering
system that enhances TrueType Fonts with special rules to support
complex scripts. Wikipedia says that: "It allows for a variety of
rendering rules, including ligatures, glyph substitution, glyph
insertion, glyph rearrangement, anchoring diacritics, kerning, and
justification." But was never intented to do x,y coordinate
positioning like we need for SignWriting, but Eduardo did manage to
get it to work. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:
Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style:
normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing:
normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: justify;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
display: inline !important; float: none; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br>
<br>
Often times when we hear of TTF we think on the fonts we use
in our text editors, and although the font created by Eduardo is
that kind of font, it still needs the Graphite engine to render
it. Only <a
href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_apps">a
few programs</a> support the Graphite engine. So if the bugs
get sorted out it will mostly be used in the SignWriting community
in the Mozilla FireFox browser.<br>
<br>
I think that a better option is to us modern web fonts along
with specialized CSS, and javascript to render the font. Font
makers such as <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://fontcustom.com/">http://fontcustom.com/</a> and <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://icomoon.io/">https://icomoon.io/</a>
create several type of fonts so that it can be compatible with
most browers. For example creating a font with
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://icomoon.io/">https://icomoon.io/</a> would create a "</span><span style="color:
rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal;
orphans: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;
text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline
!important; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span
dir="auto">Web Open Font Format", </span>"</span><span
dir="auto">Embedded OpenType", "TrueType", and an SVG font. They
are fallback fonts. If a web page can't use one type of font it
will try the next. They also work with PUA unicode area as does
Eduardo's TTF font.<br>
<br>
A popular example of the icon font called font awesome
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/examples/">http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/examples/</a> <br>
<br>
Currently they only display the font in one color only. So we
would have to save each shape in font and use CSS and javascript
to overlay two characters one for each shape on top of each other
to get a two color font we need for SignWriting. <br>
It would be some work to make the font and the CSS and
Javascript but should be smaller than current fonts, be client
side, compatible with all modern broswers, not need Graphite, not
have the same origin shortcoming as my previous fonts had (once
the font is downloaded to the browser cache, it should work in all
web sites that use it without have to fetch it for each website.<br>
So combining the work Steve Slevinski did for FSW or Unicode to
show as SignWriting on a web page, Eduardo work with TTF and my
work the refactorized font for the part, I think this would be the
most promising direction for SignWriting fonts on the web.<br>
<br>
The first step would be to put together a proof of concept and see
if we run into any unexpected problems. Then work through
creating the font file and the CSS Javascript for 1 base symbol
for each category. Then implementing the whole font.<br>
<br>
If anybody has any questions or comments, please feel free.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Jonathan<br>
<br>
</span>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
<div class="moz-signature">
<div> <img src="cid:part2.09010103.09030105@yahoo.ca" alt="">
<p>email: <a href="mailto:duncanjonathan@yahoo.ca">duncanjonathan@yahoo.ca</a><br>
<a href="mailto:joyoduncan@gmail.com">joyoduncan@gmail.com</a><br>
Cel Honduras: (504)3141-1171<br>
Tel USA: (347)875-8442 <br>
Skype: yojoduncan<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.signwriterstudio.com/">SignWriter Studio</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
________________________________________________
<p>
<p>
SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION
<p>
Valerie Sutton
SignWriting List moderator
sutton@signwriting.org
<p>
Post Messages to the SignWriting List:
sw-l@listserv.valenciacollege.edu
<p>
SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist
<p>
Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages
http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1