Alas, I was doing this from memory; my set of Lojban scripts has disappeared into some archive which in turn has gone onto one of the forty or so disks lying around. I can in fact find only one or two other actual scripts and a discussion about how to best do things given that we want an analytic script (i.e., one that indicates the significant phonological features of each phoneme in the structure of the character). Since I more or less automatically give thoroughly analytic scripts Cs or below (characters automatically blur into clusters that are going to be misread), looking at these has no point. As I recall (and this is from more than a decade ago, I am pretty sure -- maybe a whole wifetime ago), the A scripts gave each character a distinctive outline -- typically two (redundancy) distinctive marks -- and had a complexity roughly matched to the frequency of occurrence (inversely rather). The big problems then were that most of the
characters were rather complex and that (more or less consequently) cursive forms did not come naturally. I remember someone saying that they could not code many of the characters into the printers of the time (24 pin dot matrix?). None would have been an A+ then, but maybe some of this gives some direction (but note that I personally, having gotten used to Latin alphabet skimming, don't see the point of changing anyhow).
Sent: Sunday, April 6, 2008 9:54:28 AM
Subject: [lojban] Re: Original orthography draft now online for critiqueOn Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:40 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd say somewhere a bit above the middle of the range of proposals (a B of some sort -- roughly on a par with the Latin alphabet). Having to go back to dot the 'i's is a defect as is the fact that the use of diacritics for phoneme distinction increases the likelihood of misspellings and/or misreadings. That aside. the various symbols are fairly distinct, though perhaps unduly complex. It is unclear whether in a running hand the difference between a loop and a point will be maintained.
Thanks for your critique, you raise some valid points. The 'i-dotting'
mechanism is I feel, the weakest part of my proposal. I haven't found
a better mechanism yet, and I am fond of the diacritics so for now it
is unchanged. The distinction between round and point is something i
wasted many-a sheet of paper testing. I'm convinced it works. Some
characters are complex, but they still flow from the pen naturally, so
I don't consider it an issue. I'm intrigued to hear you give the
system a 'B' as you said - to which proposal would
you give an 'A'? Perhaps we can mingle the best points from both.
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