The Deseret Alphabet in Unicode
Ken Beesley - Xerox Research Centre Europe
| Intended Audience: |
Font Designers, Linguists |
| Session Level: |
Intermediate |
Statement of purpose:
This paper will review the history, interest,
and Unicode implementation of the Deseret Alphabet, a 19th-
century Mormon attempt at English spelling reform using a
non-roman alphabet.
Paper description: Review the history of the Deseret Alphabet,
showing its roots in the Pitman phonotypy movement. Review
the surviving documents, their linguistic interest, and the
need for encoding and fonts. Review the Unicode implementation
of the Deseret Alphabet.
Final summary: The current Unicode implementation of Deseret Alphabet
handles only the 38-letter version that was used in printed books.
Earlier 40-letter versions of the alphabet were used, some
interesting manuscripts survive, and the Unicode implementation
will need to be augmented slightly to encode them.
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