Re: Given Up on Roman Orthography

At 09:58 on 12.1.1999, John Cowan wrote:

> Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
> > I'm not very keen on representing Boreanesian on the web via a IPA
> > to ASCII scheme. IMO, there are no succesful ASCII-IPA schemes. But
> > perhaps I can still have a web-page with IPA fonts?
>
> You can do one of two things.  You can use the SIL IPA fonts and
> use a "<FONT face="SILDoulosIPA">...</FONT>" construction, which is
> what the Lojban book does.  In that case you should provide a
> link to the fonts so people can download them.
>
> You can also use &#nnnn; references to specify Unicode IPA
> characters, in which case your page will be upward compatible,
> but only people with 4.x browsers can read it.
>
> You can do both these things if you are willing to have two sets
> of pages.
>
> Let me know if you want more details.
There is a third way, which makes things immediately available to everyone,
without having to download fonts, without transcoding problems and
regardless of whether they have a browser that can handle Unicode (they
need to have a graphic browser, tho): to include small transparent .gif
images of each glyph in the html text.  I've tried it but never got around
to really use it myself, but others have used it with some success.  I made
a set of IPA .giflets (as I calls them:) once, and I think I have them on a
diskette somewhere.  If anyone is interested I can look them up and make
them available at the end of this week.

BTW: I saw a site once where someone displayed arabic script this way, with
one .gif per letter, quite seamlessly.  It would be hard with vertically
written cursive scripts like classical Mongolian though... ;)

/BP


    B.Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
    ----------------------------------------------------

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)