ELL: Announcement: 1- on-line Cherokee Typewriter and font conversion programs now available, 2- other indigenous font issues (Cherokee, Cree, Inuktikut, Ojibway)

[David Harris]

1. I have developed a couple of web-enabled applications with the goal of
simplifying the reading and writing of Cherokee texts. These can be accessed
through the following webpage:


http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stadium/7075/cherokee/CherokeePages.htm
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The first I call the Cherokee Phonetic Typewriter. Using a simple system of
Romanization, type your text in phonetic Cherokee and this application will
spit out Cherokee text in your choice of two encoding schemes: Cherokee
Observer and what I call LoCicero. Info about how to obtain these fonts is
available on the webpage where the app resides. A third option allows you to
print out the Cherokee text as GIFs (so that you can view the text without
actually having a font on your machine). Here's a text sample you can
cut-and-paste into the app to see how it looks:

    OSIYO. DOHITSU? HADLA HEGA?

(By the way, you'll notice that the punctuation looks sloppy in GIF mode.
That's a problem I will fix as soon as I get a chance).

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The second application is a font converter. At the moment, there are two
Cherokee font encodings competing for attention on the web. The first is
used by the Cherokee Observer of Jay, Oklahoma. The advantage of this font
is that a wealth of Cherokee-language material is available on-line in it at
the Observer's language page at http://www.galstar.com/~dcwy/language.html.
The disadvantage is that you have to buy it, whereas the LoCicero font is
available for free at http://joyce.eng.yale.edu/~joant/Cherokee.html and
http://www.dtcc.edu/~berlin/fonts.html. The problem is that very little if
any Cherokee-language material is currently available in the free font.

This program addresses that problem. Using it, you can convert back and
forth between these two encodings which enables you to read Cherokee
Observer content without actually purchasing the Observer font (although if
you can afford it, I encourage you to shell out the $25 for it since it is
so much simpler to just read it on line instead of feeding each paragraph
through this converter). Anyway, try it out and let me know if there's
something I can do to improve it.

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2. I would like to suggest that those in positions of authority or influence
with regard to font-encoding issues for Cherokee, Cree, Ojibway, and
Inuktikut speech communities consider adopting/advocating a new practice
with regard to font encodings. Many non-Roman fonts, including Cyrillic and
Thai, include Roman glyphs, digits, and punctuation. These items take up the
lower ASCII space and retain their normal Roman mapping while the
Cyrillic/Thai/other glyphs are located in the upper ASCII positions.

If Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Inuktikut fonts were to adopt this same
approach, it would simplify typing, creating webpages, and many other tasks
because you wouldn't have to swap out to a different font when changing to
English/French. Special keyboard layouts are available for Cyrillic and
other fonts which allow for moving in and out of Roman. Many of these come
with the operating system. It wouldn't be difficult at all to create these
for Cherokee so that if you're used to typing Cherokee a certain way, you'd
still be able to do so.

Another advantage to this scheme would be that people who come across a
webpage or other document for the first time will not be completely lost
since any Roman portions of the text will still be readable even if they
don't yet have the font. (Just as you can now read English documents just
fine even if your browser is set to a Cyrillic or Arabic font encoding).

At the very least, though, a standard encoding should be developed so that
communication between those of the same speech community is not hindered by
incompatible encodings. It would, perhaps, be helpful if tribal authorities
could look at this issue and develop a standard encoding in consultation
with other linguistically related groups.

    -Dave Harris, Herndon, VA


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