From: Christopher Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Sun Sep 19 2004 - 07:45:46 CDT
D. Starner wrote:
> Do stenotype machines produce shorthand symbols? What I've seen to
> TV seem to produce Latin letters, and the keyboard image found through
> Google had Latin letter on it.
> In any case, that's possibly a valid case but it would be nice if the
> people who had such data were actually saying they were interested.
When I did a search on Google last night I came up with a number of
sites which discussed mechanical stenotype machines and the like - as
well as computer applications - which produce shorthand symbols.
This means data, and where there is data someone usually needs to
archive it. Since various forms of shorthand are used for court
documents I should think it likely that there is or will be a need.
>>This came up because someone says they want to make an OpenType font for
>>Gregg shorthand symbols - which made me wonder which script block you'd
>>map the glyphs to as the symbols often don't correspond directly to
>>Latin characters.
> I'd map them to a private use area. IPA should be used for IPA, not any
> random phonetic transcription that may or may not match the way the IPA
> breaks down speech.
One trouble is that OpenType shaping engines apply shaping features in a
script specific manner. The script is essentially determined by the
script block the underlying Unicode characters belong to - so complex
shaping features are not supported for PUA characters. Another problem,
which has been discussed before, is that there are no particular
properties for PUA characters which might be needed in the case of
complex shorthand "scripts".
It might be possible to implement something using PUA characters with
Graphite or AAT fonts.
> There may be cause to encode shorthand, but how many people really want
> to store text in shorthand? And which shorthands?
If someone wants to make an OpenType font for a complex shorthand script
then he must have a user community in mind since this is not a trivial
task.
- Chris
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