From iad@xxxx.xxx.xxx Tue Sep 21 10:57:54 1999 X-Digest-Num: 239 Message-ID: <44114.239.1320.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 10:57:54 -0700 From: Ivan A Derzhanski Ivan A Derzhanski writes: > > 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". True, but still in the written form of the Chinese language there is *something* that is a sort of unit -- albeit not a minimal one -- in three ways: (1) phonetically (a syllable), (2) morphologically (a morpheme) and (3) spatially (a fixed width). It doesn't matter so much that characters may or may not contain several components, just as syllables may contain 1 to 4 phonemes (plus tone). I'm not advocating transferring the Chinese model to just any other language, just pointing out that spatial uniformity can work well when it is linked to uniformity in other, language-specific aspects. Korean groups (and squishes, in the process) letters into written syllables, which are all of the same size. That works very well for a language with such a well-defined syllable structure, but I wouldn't recommend it for English or Russian. > I think I haven't made clear one of my concerns about monospace > fonts for lojban. It's a matter of "visual tone." [...] > 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. There are some, but they're not among the most widespread ones. In books on writing systems I've certainly seen samples of some particularly incoherent ones (usually, as in the case of Japanese, resulting from the mix of two or more very different systems). > 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. This European finds sans serif hideous as a book fount. As for monospace, it gets much easier to read if word space needn't be of constant width and the lines are justified. > > 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. I like it very much. > > 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? Because it is the width of the whole that is derived from the number and the kind of the components, which is just what is uniform within a syntactic category in Lojban. > > 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). [...] > > It makes sense for {' , .} to be much narrower than the letters. > > Which nukes the uniform width bit...... It doesn't quite nuke it. It does away with the fact that, say, {l} and {m} are of the same category and {i} is of a different one, but {l} and {i} are as wide as one another, and much narrower than {m}. > 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). My position exactly. -- "mu' Dajatlhpa', reH DajatlhlaH, (Sheikh Muslihuddin Abu Muhammad Abdullah Saadi Shirazi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences