Writing to Mum in Glagolitic script

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Wed May 21 13:31:07 EDT 2014


On 21/05/14 18:19, Devin Asay wrote:
> On May 21, 2014, at 1:06 AM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
>   wrote:
>
>> On 21/05/14 05:24, Alejandro Tejada wrote:
>>> Hi Richmond,
>>>
>>> Could you create any kind of custom text editor
>> Yes: my PISMO program is just a (much simplified) version of
>> my Devawriter program using a different writing set.
>>
>> The main difference lies in the fact that both Cyrillic and Glagolitic (the writing systems used in
>> my PISMO program) are written from left-to-right in a straight-forward way.
>>
>> Devanagari (like many Indian writing systems) is written from left-to-right, but there is a problem
>> to do with the positioning of a post-vocalic R, a short I (which is written before a consonant that
>> it is sounded after, and the fact that a consonantal cluster aggregates into a new written form called
>> a 'conjunct consonant'. So Devawriter contains something in the order of 5,000 rules to make
>> sure that when end-users tap in individual glyphs (the Devanagari script is an abugida, not an
>> alphabet) the 'magic' happens [mind you, programming the thing didn't feel very magical at
>> times].
> Richmond,
>
> Have you tried out the prerelease of LiveCode 7? I'm really curious how your projects will work with it. My understanding is that all of the arcane, language-specific glyph munging rules are handled transparently (or will be). I've fiddled with it a bit with Cyrillic, and one of my students and I experimented with Arabic. The results with Cyrillic were perfect (although just typing Russian has never been problematic in LC, moving text around and looking at chunks of text required lots of hoop-jumping. Arabic and other RTLS still have some problems, but they're light years ahead of what we've had before.
>
> These are things we ought to hammer on during the Global Jam Richard announced last week. LC 7 I think will be a huge step forward for those of us who use Unicode.
>
> Regards,
>
> Devin
>
>

Devin,

No, I haven't for 2 reasons:

1. Time (and by time I mean that I will have to do a search and replace 
for thousands of numToChar statements).

2. Money (by that I mean that, currently, there is no incentive for me 
to change as my programs
work as they are [version 4.5] and the money I am making from my 
programs currently comes to about $150 per year).

However; "just for fun" (which, in my books at least, is the best reason 
to do this sort of thing<0, if
I can find the time this coming weekend, I will try with my PISMO 
programs, and then, if that works,
at a lter date with my Devawriter.

However; as I understand things the problems associated with languages 
that do not write in a
straightforward RTL or LTR way will not be sorted out; my Devawriter 
will still need all its
sub-routines to arrange letters:

Consider the Sanskrit word "Karma"; I type in k - a - r - m - a and the 
output has to be:

'kamra' (which is read and pronounced 'karma').

Similarly with the word "hindi": I type h - i - n - d - i and the output 
has to do this:

i - h - i - (nd)  where '(nd)' is a "funny letter" (conjunct consonant) 
formed when a 'n' knocks up
against an 'h'.

I have not found the Unicode system in versions of RR/LC from 2 to 6.7  
a source of difficulty;
in fact, far from it, they have been a source of great joy as I have 
been able to successfully
been able to carry my Sanskrit thing "off".
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"glyph munging rules" (what a whacked-out phrase; lovely) may be there; 
but certainly not for
Sanskrit unless one uses exactly the half-cocked halant system that 
others use that does not
do the writing system any favours; and certainly not for a writing 
system that has to access thousands of additional characters in the 
Personal Private Use areas of the Unicode system that are specific to
my specialist fonts.

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Best, Richmond.




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