TrueType Fonts

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 4, 2004

Dear SW List, and Bill!
Thank you for this message about TrueType fonts...And thank you for
sharing possible new ways to develop them. At the moment, all of the
SignWriting TrueType fonts have been created in a program called
Fontographer, by Macromedia. If you go to our web page, there is a link
to Michael Everson, who did the work in Fontograher for the Sutton
fonts, and also a link to Macromedia itself, for creating the program
that produced them...

SW Fingerspelling Fonts (Sutton Fonts)
http://signwriting.org/catalog/sw214.html

There are three series of TrueType fonts in SignWriting at present:

1. Sutton Fonts, by Michael Everson
2. Woehrmann Fonts, by Stefan Woehrmann
3. Parkhurst Fonts, by Steve Parkhurst

All made with Fontographer...

So creating TrueType for fingerspelling alone is easy in comparison to
developing fonts for typing in signs, going down the page in vertical
columns, and rotating and flopping 17,000 tiny symbols....

I will leave the issues of TrueType to all of you, and the programmers
of the world...I firmly believe that it is possible to create Unicode
for SignWriting, but I admit, I also like other ways of programming
SignWriting, and because I have my hands full, just documenting our
enormous system, I think my job will be to create the IMWA database,
and then it will be left to all of you to do the development...

In the next three messages, I will show you the Sutton, Woehrmann, and
Parkhurst font styles...Every font designer creates a different feel to
the design of the symbols, and is really like different
typefaces...some have bolder lines, some have smaller lines...so there
is a style that will someday lead to choices...like do you want to type
in italics or bold?


Val ;-)

-------------------------------


On Jun 4, 2004, at 8:33 AM, Bill Reese wrote:

> Val,
> I did a search for TrueType font generation, just to see what it
> entails.  On the way, I came across an article on Microsoft's site
> about
> International Windows and how they developed the ability to show
> different language fonts on the same machine using something they call
> Uniscribe.  The article is very complex and the subject matter is new
> to
> me, but it was interesting that it sounded very similar to some of the
> papers I read from the Lisbon conference.  Here's the link:
> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/uniscribe/default.htm
>
> Also, in reading a bit further on the subject, I came across the need
> in
> some fonts to have what they call "attachment points" for such things
> like diacritical marks - which are usually either above or below the
> rest of the characters in the fonts.  That got me to wondering if there
> could be attachment points for SignWriting symbols.  If each symbol was
> surrounded with 8 invisible attachment points, it could, theoretically,
> snap to one of the attachment points of an adjacent symbol.
>
> At the moment, the symbol placement within the character box is
> restricted by the number of pixels that the box represents on the
> screen.  This allows us to put symbols in a seemingly infinite number
> of
> arrangements.  If we had attachment points instead, while the number of
> arrangements wouldn't be infinite, it may be enough for the
> combinations
> we need.  Perhaps 16 attachment points would be needed, but you see the
> concept behind it is to provide a way to logically order the symbols in
> their spatial relationship.   You might even be able to infer a
> relationship based on attachment points - that if a symbol, say an
> arrow, is attached to a hand symbol, then it means that the hand is
> what's moving.
>
> Just a couple thoughts,
> Bill
>
>
> Valerie Sutton wrote:
>
>>
>> When I was working with Unicode specialist Michael Everson, years ago,
>> Michael told me that there would be no problem to place SignWriting
>> into Unicode, but there were three issues...The first is funding to
>> develop all the TrueType fonts for the huge symbolset...that is a big
>> task and unfortunately the first obstacle. The second is the politics
>> with the world standards...That has already been somewhat solved,
>> since
>> Michael has already gotten written acceptance for a SignWriting
>> Unicode
>> standard from the ISO (an international organization that sets world
>> standards)...hopefully, even though it has been several years now,
>> since we received that, the door will still be open when someone
>> finally works officially on Unicode. Once the first and second phases
>> are finished, there is a third phase...The programming of how the
>> TrueType fonts would work, to make it possible to type SignWriting
>> with
>> them as efficiently as we do in SignWriter DOS...or maybe even better
>> that SignWriter DOS. I know that most people do not realize that we
>> can
>> type directly in SignWriting, but we can if you know how to do it, and
>> getting Unicode to function on that level will need some programming.
>> I
>> believe that Guylhem's paper is about an idea for Unicode
>> implementation...and there are other ideas too...People seem genuinely
>> interested in the programming aspects in step three...But it is
>> completing step one that scares me ---There are a lot of symbols to
>> put
>> into TrueType!
>>
>