LL-L 'Anniversary' 2006.07.11 (08) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 11 July 2006 * Volume 08
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From: 'Ben J. Bloomgren' <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L 'Anniversary' 2006.07.10 (07) [English]

First you'll see the "pretty" version in period script. (Sorry, Sandy!)

Ron, how does Unicode deal with the period script, or do I want to know?
Have you done it in a "G-word" version (I.E. graphical)? Does Sandy mother
you about the look of the font or something?
Ben 

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Anniversary

Hi, Ben!

I didn't use Unicode.  I simply used Elizabethan replica fonts in Word and made a
graphic file that is loaded on to the web page.  A "fake facsimile," if you will.

Sandy?!  Mother me?!  You've got to be kidding me.  Not even father me!  Nah, he
wouldn't do that.  Not our Sandy he wouldn't.  He once made a remark about those
"fake facsimiles" (not his words) for precontemporary language varieties which I
understood to be somewhere between tolerating and indulging of a puerile fancy,
probably meaning that it's something like fluff (but fine if you have to have
it).  But then he added a winking smiley.  See, underneath that pragmatic, sober
and almost rugged gothic exterior lives a pretty sweet guy, and a very tolerant
one too, though he will call you on it if you be talkin' smack, as well he
should.  But don't tell him I said all this.

Well, I use those "fake facsimiles" for texts in precontemporary language
varieties to show people what the typical handwritten or printed text of the time
looks like.  You have to realize that the majority of people the world over have
no idea about that.  (Why, there are scores of Americans that believe the
original Bible was in English and are quite surprised if you tell them that it's
a Germanic language.)  I use only actual facsimile fonts, not made-up ones, and I
make sure I use the appropriate one for any given variety.

I casually monitor the "hit statistics" of the site by means of a program that
tells you where people are, what pages they looked at and how long they stayed --
nothing personal though.  This gives me a pretty good idea, and I can tell you
that we get "hit" truly from all over the world (with few exceptions, such as
North Korea).  In actual fact, the addition of the indices in Dutch, German,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian/Malay and Chinese has been
boosting visits from relevant countries (such as Indonesia, Malaysia, China and
the former Soviet states).  Furthermore, featuring non-Lowlands language
varieties (as party guests) attracts people from countries in which those or
close relatives are used.  This increases the likelihood of further contributions
along those lines and at the same time attracts people to the Lowlands "core"
area that otherwise would not know about them or would not be interested in them,
and hopefully they learn something in the process.  I am kind of happy we invited
those non-Lowlandic party guests, for several reasons, one of them being that it
shows that we don't look at "our" area in an isolated fashion, see it merely as
our focus that is a part of a whole, worldwide "organism."  (A side benefit is
that it deflects any of those prejudices we encountered in the early days, namely
that we were some kind of neo-fascist organization.  See, mention the name
"Germanic" and some people, especially in Germany, throw the baby out with the
bath water.)  

By the way, some of you may have noticed that I have, wherever relevant, added
information about precontemporary contacts with Lowlands languages on the
language information pages.  For instance, under Indonesian and Balinese it's
Dutch, under Maltese it's English, under Japanese it's Dutch and English, under
the Scandinavian languages, Finnish and Estonian it's Middle Saxon and Early
Modern Low Saxon, and so forth.  This adds to the relevance thing.  Anyone is
welcome to suggest corrections and additions.

Ben, do the gloss reveals work for you?  I'm talking about Middle Saxon, Middle
English and Early Modern English words and phrases on which people can rest their
cursors to see vocabulary help appear.  Can your reader program cope with that? 
If so, what does it do?  If not, is there something we can do to make this aid
accessible to the Blind?

Thanks for your interest and support, Ben.  Also for yours, Ingmar, which I
neglected to say the other day.  It's nice to see you guys care, not to mention
the importance of your actual contributions to the presentation.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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