Re: Typesetting Lojban [was: Lojban word processor for Windows?]

[David Brookshire Conner <nellardo@concentric.net>]

[ split - this is on spacing in typography - tengwar taken up elsewhere]
Ivan A Derzhanski writes:
 > From: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@math.bas.bg>
 > 
 > Yes, I am on the list, and here's what I have to say:
 > 
 > (1) Like Mark, I prefer monospace to proportional for Lojban.
 > I don't know whether Lojban is hot or cold, poetic or prosaic,
 > fluid or solid, nor whether it needs to be any of those things.
 > Its first and strongest claim is to being a *logical* language,
 > and in this it can't afford to fail.

Point taken.

 > Forget about typewritten English; think on a larger scale.
 > The Chinese script is always monospace, and yet looks gorgeous,
 > doesn't it? 

Yes, it does look gorgeous, especially when written by someone that
knows what they are doing. However, keep in mind that the parts of
Chinese orthography closest to what might be called "letters" are
*not* monospace - many Chinese characters are composed of several
other characters, squished and cropped to fit into the "monospace"
rectangle of a Chinese "character".

I think I haven't made clear one of my concerns about monospace fonts
for lojban. It's a matter of "visual tone." If you recall Knuth's
writing on the line breaking algorithm for TeX, that's the same kind
of thing I mean - the main prose should strive for a relatively even
"color".  From what I've read on typography, this is a major concern
when designing a book font (for display fonts, all bets are off, of
course). I would suggest that Chinese orthography generally exhibits
this characteristic. I can't think of a single natural orthography
that *doesn't* particularly exhibit this trait. The only one that
comes to mind (though this may just be my lack of truly broad
familiarity with the field) is Japanese, which only lacks a uniform
"color" because written Japanese is usually mix of *four* orthographic 
systems (one matching Chinese orthography, two Japanese syllabic
orthographies (one for native words and one for foreign words), and
the Roman alphabet).

Now that I think of it, though, studies on font readability (as I
recall), indicate that what you find easiest to read is what you learn 
to read on. Hence, most Europeans find sans serif just dandy for book
fonts, while most Americans find serif easier.  Perhaps this suggests
that people find monospace fonts harder to read because they generally 
did not grow up learning to read that way.

 > More to the point, it is a logical thing:  1 unit
 > of width = 1 syllable = 1 morpheme.  (With very few exceptions.)

I lost your referent here. Are you referring to Chinese still or to
lojban?  If Chinese, it's incorrect, as previously noted, many of the
characters are a combination of "primitive" characters. If lojban,
yes, within a particular part of speech, if you use a monospace font
(hence this thread) or if you measure width in characters.

 > Do you like the fact that all Lojban gismu are of equal length,
 > measured in phonemes/letters (5 in all, 3 consonants and 2 vowels)?

Hmmm. I'm neutral on it. It's a nice pattern, especially when the
letters are chosen cleverly.

 > Well, I want the next logical thing:  I also want them to be of
 > equal width on paper.  

Why is *width* the next logical thing? Why not height? Or color - you
could track cmavo tighter than brivla or some other pattern.

 > That doesn't have to mean monospace as in
 > all characters being of the same width, but I'd like every consonant
 > to be as wide as every other, and every vowel as wide as every other
 > (perhaps less wide than the consonants). 

If logic becomes a concern for the orthography, though, it seems to
open things up to some sticky questions - the lojban alphabet seems to 
be based only scantly on "logic" - its basis is much stronger in
engineering and pragmatics. We use it because many people already use
it.

Hmmm. This has the gears going. What would a lojban-specific,
*logical* orthography look like?

 > It makes sense for {' , .}
 > to be much narrower than the letters.

Which nukes the uniform width bit......

This is quite a stimulating discussion - I am enjoying it immensely
(and if I sound strident or shrill anywhere, please don't take it as a 
personal attack - I don't intend such and am merely getting excited by 
an enjoyable discussion).

Brook

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E Pluribus Modem

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Fancy. Myth. Magic.
http://www.concentric.net/~nellardo/