Vertical script (was: UTF-8 support in *nix terminals)

On Saturday 02 September 2006 00:02, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Speaking of fonts, has anyone experimented with purely vertical writing
> systems? (I.e., one where you simply *cannot* write horizontally without
> severely crippling the system.) Even better, has anyone gotten vertical
> writing to actually *work* in an application, say your browser?
Two of the Shaquelingua's scripts are vertical: an alphabetical one and a
syllabical one. So far, I have a page only for the vertical alphabet:

http://home.tele2.fr/mxls/cakesar/vert-alpha.html

It needs improvement but you got the general idea.

Just for fun I also drew an ornamental syllabary:
http://home.tele2.fr/mxls/images/bli/syllabary.png

It's name is /BlitayI/ [b4itaHi]:
http://home.tele2.fr/mxls/images/bli/blitayi.png

In action, it looks like this:
http://home.tele2.fr/mxls/images/bli/story.png

So far, I haven't seen any application supporting vertical scripts natively.
The trick I used was to designed the font as an horizontal one and, in the
DTP program, I just turned the text frame 1/4 of turn to the right so the
content appears as intended. The DTP program I use even allows me to type
vertically. That's disturbing... but fun!

That works right for the shaquean vertical scripts because the lines of text
go from right to left. To do more, I guess a trip to Japan might be the
solution.  ;-)

/xa zatō satxi./ [Za: zatO sa.tCi] (= There will be speech again.)

--
==================
Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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