Re: Greek characters in IPA usage

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Tue Aug 18 2009 - 06:11:35 CDT

  • Next message: Karl Pentzlin: "Re: Greek characters in IPA usage"

    On 18 Aug 2009, at 10:51, Julian Bradfield wrote:

    > Is it really the case that Arabic and Hindi speakers *can't read*
    > unshaped script? What did Hindi and Arabic look like on 1970s
    > computers with 9x15 bitmaps on green screens?

    Yes, Julian, it really is the case. Bitmaps in those cases gave four
    different forms to Arabic BEH, encoding the cells as four different
    characters. I don't know what Hindi did, in truth, in that context.

    > I personally stick to the core font system because I find bitmapped
    > fonts far clearer and easier to read than ****type fonts in the
    > sizes I use

    You should try the splendid Everson Mono. :-)

    > For the last (almost) twenty years, I've been using the same core
    > application. In the last ten years, that application has changed
    > hardly at all. It predates Unicode, but now sort of supports it; it
    > far predates Pango, and I see little prospect of anybody doing the
    > massive job of porting it to Pango in the foreseeable future - quite
    > apart from the fact that that would introduce lots of dependencies
    > on rapidly changing software.

    What's the application?

    Honestly, Julian, I understand where you're coming from. It took me
    ages to migrate from Eudora to Apple Mail, and it took some time to
    adjust, but I'd never look back now. I can type (in splendid Everson
    Mono) e-mails in IPA with no trouble. My most recent pleasure is
    typesetting with Quark XPress, which since version 7 has been Unicode
    capable. My Middle English dictionary was done entirely in Unicode,
    using ONE font, Baskerville, for Latin (including IPA, þ, ð, ȝ, and
    ƕ), Greek, and Cyrillic. And boy am I glad I didn't have to compromise
    and switch fonts for an accurate IPA beta or chi.

    Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/



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