From lojban-out@lojban.org Tue Jun 21 11:58:02 2005 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 3802 invoked from network); 21 Jun 2005 18:58:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.172) by m30.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 21 Jun 2005 18:58:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta4.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 21 Jun 2005 18:58:02 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1Dknwe-0007Xr-BB for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:58:00 -0700 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1DknwH-0007XU-Rj; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:42 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1Dknw3-0007XB-I8 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:23 -0700 Received: from zproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.162.197]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Dknvy-0007X2-5A for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:23 -0700 Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 13so1478701nzn for ; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.36.24.15 with SMTP id 15mr4201221nzx; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.36.67.14 with HTTP; Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:57:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <737b61f30506211157373a41b3@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 13:57:14 -0500 In-Reply-To: <42B7EAEE.3070707@yandex.ru> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <1119217594.8641.7.camel@localhost> <200506201344.j5KDiLTd003997@mole.e-mol.com> <42B7EAEE.3070707@yandex.ru> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 10229 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: pdf23ds@gmail.com X-list: lojban-list X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Originating-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-Msg-Info: 1:12:0 X-eGroups-From: Chris Capel From: Chris Capel Reply-To: pdf23ds@gmail.com Subject: [lojban] Re: Lojban neography X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790; y=q_D9b3jgp3W8gcnGRj4MqLo16IjjFAEA8W0n0ie_vWQIhNJWgw X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 24596 On 6/21/05, Aleksej R. Serdyukov wrote: > Matt Arnold wrote: > > coi rodo, > > A couple of years ago I read of Eric S. Raymond's Tengwar orthography for Lojban (http://www.catb.org/~esr/tengwar/lojban-tengwar.html) and it got me thinking about Lojban alphabets. I had an idea which I've been working on for a couple of years, to design an alphabet along certain principles: > > 1. Each word would be written without the pen leaving the page; no dotting i's or crossing t's. A gap in the line would represent the period character, which is a pause. > > 2. Unlike cursive, the baseline would be in the vertical center instead of at the bottom, so that voiced consonants and vowels would tend to be descenders, and unvoiced consonants would tend to be ascenders. > > How would it be to use on a computer? > > > {se'i} I want an alphabet that would be both simple to hand-write and to > computer-use. In this vein, a while back I designed a new alphabet for computer use. I didn't worry about matching the shapes to the sounds, as I believe that there is no practical advantage to doing so. I didn't worry about making it easy to handwrite--I'd rather see a completely new script designed for handwriting. I designed the font so that the shapes would be maximally unique and identifiable at extremely small font sizes. I think I failed considerably on this point, as the human mind tends to classify shapes based not on their orientation, but on their non-oriented shape and complexity, etc. and different letters in my font have several kinds of symmetry. I tried reading text for an hour a day for about two weeks, and my reading speed (normally 200-300+ wpm) hovered around 25 wpm near the end. With a few more months of practice, I might have regained a more natural speed (though probably not as fast as with the roman alphabet, ever), but I felt the effort wasn't worth it. Here are some images and the font and source: http://pdf23ds.net/weird-font . Interestingly, after two months, I can still read the screenshot rather haltingly. Learning this kind of stuff tends to burn itself into your brain rather deeply. I think the lesson I learned from this is that an alphabet where each letter was much, much more distinct would probably do better. The distinction would have to be something more readily recognizable by the brain. And in this aspect, the current roman alphabet is well suited. I don't believe, after my experiment, that it's possible to improve on it significantly for computer/display use. Something to keep in mind is that fluent readers tend to read the whole word at once, so it's important to have words with distinct outlines and broad shapes. Varying heights seem important. However, my font is extremely beautiful, compared to anything I've seen. Tamil is kind of nice, but not as modern-looking to me. (It doesn't display well on windows at low font points--I don't have the hinting right. Curvy fonts are hard to hint correctly, and windows' font renderer sucks compared to Linux's.) For handwriting, however, I think there are a number of improvements that could be made on the roman alphabet. Matt's script is a start, but I think that it's important to keep the stroke counts as low as possible, and I think a number of improvements could be made there. I don't think legibility should be a priority for a script designed for handwriting, but rather speed. I don't think legible handwriting should be a priority any more. Handwriting itself may fall completely out of use in a few more decades. It's important that the shapes remain distinguishable, but some cues could be taken from, e.g. Gregg shorthand in this area. While Gregg, IIRC, is based on the sounds of the speech and not the letters, I don't think that's necessary or desirable to emulate, even in a script designed for use not just with lojban. Chris Capel -- "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)