Re: Constructed vertical writing systems?

On Wednesday 23 April 2003 07:23 am, J. K. Hoffman wrote:
> In fact, has anyone worked with making their ConScripts into fonts?  I'm
> especially interested in how folks work with vertical fonts, like the
> much mentioned Mongolian.  However, any information anyone has about
> creating fonts for their conlang would be *very* much appreciated.
> What are the biggest challenges?  What are the most tricky "gotchas"?
> What about kerning iconic or pictographic fonts?  Any hints,
> suggestions, etc.?
        First, there's a little side group over at Yahoo called LaTeX for Conlangers,
in which one of the group projects is the creation of a METAFONT tutorial (if
you don't know what TeX/LaTeX is, we will be happy to disabuse you of your
innocence. :) Christophe Grandsire is almost done with the first part,
hurray, hurray. Several of us our quite eager to start creating our own fonts
with something more elegant than TrueType.
        In regards to your questions, some of the biggest challenges will probably be
created by the very nature of your script. If your script has hundreds of
letters (Sanskrit, Japanese, Chinese,etc), or marks vowels by the means of
diacritics (Hebrew, Arabic, Tengwar), or has different initial, medial, and
final forms (Arabic, Mongolian), you are going to start running into some
problems. Not to say that there aren't answers, since obviously all of the
above mentioned languages have fonts, but expect to make some compromises.
        :Peter
--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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