forum

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hi Mia,

It looks like your email was composed in Microsoft work using an
8-bit, non-Unicode font.

In GMail, i received your email as as a text file, where i could not
read all the characters correctly. And an mso attachment ... and some
embedded word content that gmail reads as an attachment and that i
can't open with word.

I'm not sure whether this list can handle attachments, so will cc
directly to you as well.

The pdf should show what I understand your characters are (using the
Charis SIL font) without the glottal indicated. Still searching for
the right choice in Unicode (including the new stuff in Unicode 5.1)

let me know if I've got anything wrong.

Andrew

On 27/02/2008, Mia Kalish <MiaKalish at learningforpeople.us> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Andrew, you have done such a wonderful and complete job of covering all the
> issues and the details of those issues, that it seems that, Yep is too
> parsimonious.
>
> If you read my response to Bill, it has the general format, hopefully as
> well detailed as yours, of the nasalized, rising tone vowel issue.
>
> As well as functional, I think fonts should be pretty. Fonts have an
> ambience; I actually knew someone a few years ago who did her dissertation
> on the aesthetics of fonts, and how they contributed to people's responses
> to documents. It took her quite a while to wade through all that was
> involved, and she only used half-a-dozen fonts.
>
> Sorry to hear about @font-face. I tried the Embed TrueType fonts option in
> Word, and it works very well for everything but the subject line in email.
> To use it, you select Save As, then Tools/Save Options, and it's the 4th
> checkbox option in the first column.
>
> I have used it when sending documents for publication, and also in email for
> my friends who also have Word and Outlook. In Outlook, it's Tools/Options. .
> . and then click the Save tab. And it's right there, 4th item, with
> embedding options.
>
> Like: Here is Athapascan Naaki. I can install my template right here in the
> email, and then use it to insert all the characters: ąęįæų (nasals); áéíóú
> (rising tones with the little pointy-up-to-the-right guy); åëïöü (rt-n) see
> how they combine the diacritics? Then there are the other specials: ä (The
> "real" glottal that works as a character); ł (barred l); ń nasalized n,
> borrowed somehow from the Spanish, I think. And of course everything comes
> in CAPITALS: ĄĘĮÆŲÅËÏÖÜÁÉÍÓÚŁŃ
>
> Now if I send this, because I selected the Embed True Type fonts option, it
> should come to you okay. (I made it big so its easier to see . . .  )
>
> Mia
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>  From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Andrew Cunningham
>  Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 3:41 PM
>  To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>  Subject: Re: [ILAT] forum
>
>
>
>
> Hi Mia,
>
>
>
> when you said "Apachean has special characters for the
>
> high-tone/rising vowels which are not supported directly by Unicode."
>
> I'd be interested knowing which Apachean characters are not supported.
>
>
>
> I haven't played with flash much yet. Mainly working on web services,
>
> web sites, most of my work is on internationalization architecture
>
> relating to community languages. We prefer to build our sites so we
>
> can throw any language at it. Although i want to do more work on good
>
> classes and functions to handle language specific case-folding and
>
> collation.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately there is no real font embedding mechanism. CSS
>
> introduced the @font-face command, and Netscape 4 and IE 4/5/5.5
>
> played with it.
>
>
>
> But the command was removed from CSS 2.1. We're currently waiting for
>
> CSS 3.0 to provide a workable solution.
>
>
>
> It is possible to embedded SVG fonts in SVG files, but the barrier
>
> here is SVG plugins have limited support for the SVG font modules. SVG
>
> could have been very good, but good browser support has been slow, and
>
> many developers use flash instead.
>
>
>
> Fonts are always a problem. The languages i work with may have only
>
> one to five fonts available capable of correctly rendering text in
>
> those languages. Added to that, we are limited by the capabilities of
>
> the font rendering and text layout services for the operating systems.
>
>
>
> The ability to use languages on computers has advanced greatly over
>
> the years, yet there are still barriers and hurdles. probably one of
>
> the reasons i use html and xml as a medium.
>
>
>
> One of my side projects at the moment is writing documentation and
>
> help files to assist African language clients on configuring their
>
> computers to view African language content on the web. We're focusing
>
> on languages that require combining diacritic support and diacritic
>
> stacking.
>
>
>
> Or languages that require alternative glyphs.
>
>
>
> There are some really good, flexible fonts out there at the moment,
>
> but the limitations are often at the OS or application level.
>
>
>
> For one language (Moro) we require alternative glyphs for two
>
> character pairs. The font Charis SIL has the alternative glyphs
>
> available as an alternative (the opentype spec provides a mechanism
>
> for accessing and using alternative glyphs) unfortunately most
>
> applications do not provide a mechanism to access these features.
>
> Indesign and WorldPad come to mind as possibilities.
>
>
>
> WorldPad is very simple program, but useful in some circumstances. And
>
> Indesign, although it supports alternative glyphs and ligatures very
>
> well, doesn't handle diacritic positioning ... catch-22 as the
>
> expression goes.
>
>
>
> Getting fonts to installed on users computers either means the end
>
> user has to down load and install fonts, or distributing keyboard
>
> layouts or IMEs that have bundled fonts with them.
>
>
>
> But then free keyboard layout solutions (Like MSKLC) are fairly
>
> limited and unsophisticated, and not always suitable for our
>
> requirements.
>
>
>
> So often we provide a free solution (based on MSKLC) and a more
>
> sophisticated alternative based on a commercial solution (Keyman
>
> Desktop) which we can bundle other stuff.
>
>
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
> --
>
> Andrew Cunningham
>
> Andrew Cunningham
>
> Vicnet Research and Development Coordinator
>
> State Library of Victoria
>
> Australia
>
>
>
> andrewc at vicnet.net.au
>
> lang.support at gmail.com
>


-- 
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham
Vicnet Research and Development Coordinator
State Library of Victoria
Australia

andrewc at vicnet.net.au
lang.support at gmail.com
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