Re: My conscript

On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 09:44:04AM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
> While I never know how an alphabet looks until I see a writing sample
> (the *original* Chevraqis script looked fine in design until I wrote it
> vertically and discovered it looked yucky vertically as opposed to
> horizontally), I like the shapes.  How did you get the shapes to come out
> so regularly?  My own motor control is lousy with my art tablet.  :-p
Heh. Those shapes were painfully hand-crafted using a *pixel* editor --
drawn pixel-by-pixel!! They'd *better* come out good, for the amount of
effort I put into them. :-) I know there are easier ways to do it, but,
being the perfectionist that I am, I want to make sure every last detail
is done right. :-P

What I *really* should do is to make a font using MetaFont and then
typeset the script using LaTeX (professional word processing / typesetting
system for Unix/Linux), but that would mean learning Metafont (which is an
entire programming language in itself) and learning how to tweak TeX/LaTeX
to use it. So I think I'll stick with the current approach of designing 36
or so glyphs for the different sounds and then using cut-and-paste and
copy-and-modify with my pixel editor.

Eventually, I probably have to do it with Metafont because right now, the
font size is fixed... and I am NOT gonna spend another 20 hours or so
re-drawing larger versions of those letters, only to find that I need to
do it yet a third time for another size... Better save my next effort
making something in Metafont that is infinitely scalable. :-)

> Looks nice.  Only other comment I have is that semi-dyslexic (well, not
> "for real," but I might as well be) may confuse letters with their
> up-down mirror images.  This is sometimes problematic in Korean as well,
> since nearly *all* the vowels are rotations of 90k degrees from one set,
> and it can be confusing, especially if you're not awake.
True, true. There *is* a systematic (well, kinda) mnemonic for the vowel
symbols, though. Once you learn the mnemonic, it shouldn't be *that* hard
to figure it out. Though, yeah, it still can be easily misread sometimes,
esp. when you're reading it fast! :-) Those breathing marks are especially
tricky -- imagine the confusing horror of a smooth-breathed vowel
inscript... it would be next to impossible to tell the difference. Good
thing breathing marks are only allowed in places where the full vowel
glyph is used! :-)


T