Re: My conscript

On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:55:24PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> H.S.Teoh wrote:
> >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>
>
> Hmm, from the looks of them, I assumed you'd already created a font.......
Well, technically, I kinda did. I made a set of glyphs for each symbol I
have, which are exactly 24x24 pixels each. So all I need to do is to
copy-and-paste the symbols next to each other on a blank pixmap. This
shouldn't be very hard to automate (esp. given that I'm a hardcore
programmer), so practically speaking, I *have* created a font, just that
it's not in a form ready for others' use. :-)

[snip]
> Seems that you, unlike me, really know your way around on the computer.
It took you that long to notice? :-P  *ducks*

> Have you ever looked at the Font Creator Program from High Logic.com? (Free
> for 30 days, $20-30 or so to register.)
Hmm. Requires Windows... I don't have Micro$oft on my computer :-P

[snip]
> I'm sure it would be a simple matter to take your carefully drawn symbols
> and enlarge/reduce/whatever them.  I started with handwritten chars from the
> scanner, which required lots of editing, tedious but fun after a while in a
> perverse way.  Your super-, in- and sub-scripts might be a problem, but not
> insurmountable.
I probably have to pre-generate glyphs with the super-, in- and
sub-scripts, because some of them are placed differently depending on what
they're attaching to (esp. the inscripts; otherwise the result would be an
unreadable mesh). This will expand the number of glyphs by about 9, but
hey, that's what computers and automation are for. :-P

> Bear in mind, you have 255 spaces available.
Hmm. I *might* need more than that, though it's doubtful. I think Metafont
is the way to go, for me, since it can have an arbitrary number of glyphs
defined, and once I straighten out how characters are mapped to symbols, I
probably could just type in the orthography and it will automatically
typeset everything in the native script. Mmmmm, sounds good! *rubs hands
in glee* OK, I think I *really* need to learn Metafont (and put those huge
multi-MB TeX tools sitting on my HD to good use).

> Quite by accident, my /tS/ char, assigned to _c_, will also show up with a
> cedilla-- not used in the script, but it looks so good I'm going to figure
> out some use for it!
Heh. The symbols for 'r' and 'l' that I currently have are adapted from a
previous conscript I made. I liked their shape so much, esp. their ease of
being made into ligatures with other symbols, that I decided to import
them. :-)

(I've made many conscripts before; but most are just English
relexifications since I was rather weak in the technicalities of grammars
back then.)

[snip]
> ... (under Gates, all things are possible....aren't they?)
[snip]

Ewwwww. *cringe from an exclusive Linux user* :-)

> Yoon Ha wrote:
> >> 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.>
>
> That's already becoming a problem for me:  /h/ and /f/, and /k/ and /p/, are
> very similar-- and /i/ and /u/, and /e/ and /o/ are mirror images. And
> although "b" and "d" are /mb, nd/, I tend to type in the m and n chars
> too.....Oh well, practice, practice.
Heh. I tend to think the same way too -- my conscript may look too
complicated and confusing, but hey, I remember how confusing the English
alphabet was when I was first learning it! Not to mention long, harsh
hours spent making identical copies Chinese characters, each filling up an
entire page... Sometimes I'm ashamed at myself for actually forgetting how
to read Chinese, after all this effort (even though I *did* try to get
away with doing as little as possible). Guess that's my punishment for
being such a bad student in primary school. :~(

> I have to confess to being less than a perfectionist..... During the last 10
> years of house-remodeling on the cheap, my guiding principle became, "Hey,
> it's better than it was......"
Sometimes it's good not to be so perfectionist... my problem is that doing
something imperfect is so odious to me that sometimes I end up never
getting anything done to begin with.


T