From: Peter_Constable@sil.org
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 18:06:09 EDT
"William Overington" <WOverington@ngo.globalnet.co.uk> wrote on 05/05/2003
04:25:40 PM:
> >> I wonder if I could please put forward an idea that fontmakers might
like
> to consider please.
>
> > And I wonder if I may please suggest that one might
> consider avoiding the practice of writing using unnecessary periphrasis
> please. :-)
> Although you have sought to comment upon my style of writing,
Just giving you a bit of a ribbing :-)
> please know
> that the way I wrote is a perfectly ordinary way for someone to write
polite
> English.
But, would it really have been any less polite to say, "Perhaps fontmakers
might consider [doing X]:" or "I'd like to suggest that fontmakers [do X]"?
Either of those seem equally polite, and don't even require one instance of
"please", let alone two. :-)
> The user community would have the pleasure of printing words of their own
> language in a display font, so that they too could enjoy stylish
typography
> in their own language.
OK, certainly if there were font developers supporting their language by
explicit design. Thanks for the clarification.
> When I look at the web at font sites, so many fonts have only a few
accented
> characters, often those for the languages with large user populations.
I agree that there is a need for a greater variety of fonts that support
extended Latin character sets. So, I'm all in agreement with you on this.
> I would
> have hoped that someone such as yourself with your interests would have
> encouraged the idea.
Absolutely.
> Are you seeking to put down my idea by an argument
> based upon the fallacy of the undistributed middle?
No, I'm sorry, I had misunderstood your intent since it sounded like you
were asking for arbitrary extensions of a basic character set. Actually,
what might be most helpful would be to identify an extended Latin set and
be able to say, "support this in your font and it will be adequate for all
these European languages..." or "...all these African languages..." etc.
But that takes a bit of work for any sizeable number of languages.
> Since you mention the Mbandja language, how would a
> font designer straightforwardly find which characters are needed for that
> language please?
That's the problem that makes my previous suggestion involve a lot of work:
sources for this kind of information are very hard to come by.
> I hope that you might like to reconsider my idea. If a few font
designers
> start to add a few less-than-common characters into fonts, then maybe
> something good will come out of it.
Now that I understand it better, I support your idea, though I'd like to
see more than just a few extra characters added to people's fonts.
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
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