Curtis Clark <jcclark@mockfont.com> wrote:
>> You are not going to find many fonts on the Web that contain PUA
>> characters.
>
> Actually, every Truetype font with Windows Symbol encoding uses the
PUA.
Good point.
>> Personally, I'd like to see a font that covers all or most
>> of the ConScript characters, but that seems impossible since so many
of
>> the ConScript glyphs have become unavailable, possibly forever.
>
> Please explain what you mean by this.
What I mean is that for the majority of the scripts registered in
ConScript, glyphs are either not available or unreasonably hard to
access, because the ConScript registration depends on outside links that
have vanished or have been moved to obscure places.
The main ConScript page explains carefully how to submit a script for
registration, and uses the existing Tengwar page as an example. In
particular, there is supposed to be a table of glyphs, typically in GIF
format, that can be displayed alongside the U+xxxx assignments. For
over half of the scripts, however, there is no table, but rather a link
to somebody's Web page where "further information" is supposed to be
available.
Here are the results of a quick tally I took, early this morning, right
before work, so I may be off by one or two, OK?
11 scripts are completely specified on their ConScript page.
4 require you to visit an outside page to view glyphs, and they
are all there (without U+xxxx code points).
2 require you to visit an outside page to view glyphs, but some are
missing.
3 require you to visit an outside page, but the link is broken.
4 have no table or link at all to allow you to view glyphs.
1 ConScript page itself is a broken link (Kazat-Akkorou).
15 point you to Herman Miller's main Web page, where you will be
frustrated.
Herman Miller's site <http://www.io.com/~hmiller/> is an important case,
because so much of ConScript is occupied by his scripts. Miller is
listed as "a prolific creator of constructed languages spoken by
(imaginary) alien races as well as by humans." I had never heard of
him, but evidently he must be important. What seems to have happened is
that he has moved on from designing one "fictional universe," as he puts
it, to another, and almost all of his previously designed scripts have
been either removed from his page or moved to some obscure location that
I don't have the patience to hunt down. And there are no back-links to
ConScript or U+xxxx code points for his scripts, even if you can find
them. You have to meander through his little worlds of cute, lovable
elves to find out anything about the scripts. Bah.
If all of the registered scripts had to have a table, like the one shown
in the Tengwar example, it would be easy to find the glyphs and learn
about the script, and maybe even design a font. But this is only true
for 27 percent of the registrations. I submitted my own registration
last year, following the Tengwar example diligently, but it was put on
hold because no TrueType font was available and so the script couldn't
be interchanged. It seems to me that this standard didn't apply to
Herman Miller's scripts or most of the others. (Sorry, Michael, for
airing my dirty laundry in public.)
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Mar 19 2002 - 12:40:15 EST