IPA in spreadsheets (was: antedating "hobo" 1885)

[David Bowie]

From:    Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> <Nathan.Sanders at williams.edu> wrote:
>> On May 28, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

>>> Of course truespel can do all these things without the need for
>>> special fonts.

>> Nonsense. Â Truespel needs a font that uses glyphs that match the
>> English alphabet (and has an ASCII encoding). Â Truespel as you know it
>> would be unrecognizable if rendered with a font like Symbol or
>> Windgings.

> Though I feel strange defending Mr. Z., he said "without the need for
> *special* fonts. Arguably, a Unicode font that supports all the IPA
> characters is "special" in contrast to a font that need only support
> ASCII.

Tell that to those writing in Ewe (with both upper- and lower-case
engma--and, of course, there's the choice of *which* capital engma gets
used), let alone Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, or Cree.

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org