Re: Delason ...

On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 19:42:49 -0400, Nizar Y.A. Habash <habash@...>
wrote:

>Hello guys,
>  My name is Nizar Habash.  I am a new member on the list. I heard through
>Basilius that there were some question some of you had about Delason, and
>its web page.
Hello, and welcome to the list!

>I will try to answer these question here:
>
>Dynamic Fonts and the web:
>I created the Delasoni script using Fontographer.  This got me the
>TrueType fonts (.ttf) I used to edit the Delasoni book.  To display the
>fonts on the web dynamically I converted the .ttf font to .pfr (using
>Typograph from www.hexmac.com) and also to .eot (using WEFT from
>www.microsoft.com/typography).  The conversion is relatively
>straightforward.  The reason for the two conversions is that the first is
>what Netscape expects and the second is what IE expects.
WebFont Wizard promises to convert 10 fonts to PFRs free:
http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/webfonttools/webfontwiz/index.h
tml

The WebFont Player plug-in (free) is said to display PFRs with IE:
http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/webfonttools/webfontplayer/inde
x.html

Have you played with these?

I had the latter installed when I viewed the Georgian site in IE. Didn't
notice any problem, except for the page itself being too heavy.

> May be that's
>why some of the sites you guys discussed (a Georgian magagzine?) had
>problems by providing one but not the other.  I tried to look into that
>site myself but I was very slow. and almost crashed my system.  I wonder
>if they have any customers.  I believe WEFT is free.  The copy I have and
>still use (from time to time) is version 1.0 -- current version is 3.0.
>Typograph used to be for $200.00/license.  I still use version 1.0 (now
>up to 2.0).  I  don't know what their current prices are.  Both tools
>protect ownership and copyrights by forcing the burning of the location of
>the source of the files in the files themselves:  for example, my Delasoni
>font has in it the string "www.cs.umd.edu/~habash" somewhere so that if
>someone took the font and tried to use it somewhere else it will fail.
>One more thing,  the users viewing the pages on Netscape must make sure
>they allow Dynamic font display (Edit->Preference->Fonts).
Thanks! I'll try what is free. And I'll have lotta questions, probably...

>Arabic displays:
>  I saw that you came across the Arabix project that I worked on in my
>last year in my undergraduate degree.  Since then I have found better ways
>to implement Arabic on the web: http://www.nuun.net  (even though I am
>having problems separating from this company at this point --- I have to
>say the products are nice)  They include editors, Arabic dynamic fonts
>with special characterset and Arabic input applets (I also created two
>more one in Hebrew and one in Phoenician).
The demos are nice, but the prices are monstrose (for me, that is) :(

The image-based fonts used in Arabix are interesting too... I guess
they're easier for various ad hoc characters. No?

>Delason news:
>  I haven't updated the website in a while.  There have been several
>interesting events related to Dealson:  a part of a news article, three
>marriages that used a Delasoni wedding certificate, all my classmates from
>Old Dominion university's Honors College received Delasoni graduation
>certificates the year I graduated (1997) signed by the dean o fteh
>college; and finally, the ideogram for Knowledge from the Delasoni script
>is now part of the official shield of the Honors college (see
>http://web.odu.edu/ao/honors/) and it is engraved on all the graduation
>medals they give their students.  I just had my 10,000 day birthday last
>week and my friends and I had a Delasoni theme, the celebration was termed
>an onedoza (or 10,000 in Delasoni).
So, Delason is going to be one of the most widely used artlangs ;)

>  I have been on the mailing list for two days only and I am amazed at the
>active participation ... very busy list.  Very interesting discussions
>too.  My problem is like most of you I tend to get very involved in
>anything relating to languages.  I am doing my PhD currently in
>computational linguistics focusing on machine translation.  And in the
>last two days only I have been quite distracted by teh interesting
>discussions. So, I think I will take myself of the list for now and just
>read the digest form.   However, if any of you have any questions for me,
>please don't shy from asking.  I might be slow in responding on some days,
>but I will always respond.  You can email me at habash@cs.umd.edu.
Thank you again! Like I said, I *will* have questions... :)
>
>Thanks
>Nizar
Basilius