Re: A single font can display ANY alphabet, pictograph, or rune

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Gary Shannon wrote:
> --- tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > Gary,
> > I forgot to mention how much I like and appreciate
> > the LOTEP (Loops,
> > Odd-crossings, Tips, Even-crossings, Pieces) method
> > for ordering the
> > characters.
> >
> > Tom H.C. in MI
>
> Thanks. I developed that many years ago when I
> developed a pictographic language. I had several
> thousand pictographs and I needed a way to organize
> them. It's the only conlang I ever became thoroughly
> fluent in. That was in pre-PC days so the whole
> dictionary was done by hand. Unfortunately it was lost
> in a house fire and I've never gotten around to
> re-creating it.
>
Gary,
I'd like to second Tom's vote of appreciation.  Your
LOTEP system strikes me as potentially a very useful
aid to classifying and finding characters in any writing
system with a large grapheme inventory.

The standard method for organising a Chinese
dictionary, as I'm sure you know, is to classify
characters by their radicals.  Learning and recognising
those radicals is itself a large feat of memory, which
means beginners often can't find the character they
want - even though it's in the dictionary!  If a Chinese
lexicographer used the LOTEP method instead, even
the rawest beginner would be able to look up anything,
provided he or she could count.

One question on LOTEP - how do you break ties?  The
example you gave of two characters with the same
LOTEP number seems to consist of a "base" character
(the leftmost of the pair) and a derivative of it.
Clearly, one could devise an orthography where that
base character had several derivatives, each with the
same LOTEP number.  Do you have any thoughts on
what principles might be useful for ordering them?

Pity about your pictographic language!  But I bet you
lost more than that in the fire.  These days, you can
"save" a copy of your work to the Internet.  Reminds
me I need to back up a bit more often ...  If you ever
do recreate it, be sure to send copies to all the
conlangers you know. :-)

Regards,
Yahya


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.2/137 - Release Date: 16/10/05

Reply