6 ms·

Mongolian script is unusual because of its orientation. How do UIs handle the script? For example mobile chat applications.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
The short answer is that they don't. Android flat out doesn't support vertical scripts so there's a library that reimplements a lot of UI components. iOS basically doesn't, but it's somewhat easier to work around. Chrome and Firefox can render the characters with appropriate fonts, but that can be uncommon and applications using them screw up. Electron apps generally render vertical scripts LTR for example.
scarmig 5y ago
This is based off 30 minutes of naive research; if someone knows better, please correct me. (No better way to get information than to say something wrong on the Internet.) Most of the time, major or more sophisticated apps will just use Cyrillic (in Mongolia) or be written in Mandarin (in Inner Mongolia, CN). There are, however, web pages in the traditional script, which you can look at to get a sense of how a UI layout for a vertical script might work [0][1][2]. I also found a website with a full list, with many broken links [3]. From an encoding perspective, Unicode historically hasn't meshed well with Mongolian script, because of a surfeit of homographs. From what I can gather, Menksoft supports the most widely used alternative encoding method, which isn't Unicode-compatible. This apparently makes searching and indexing traditional Mongolian pages hard. [0] http://khumuunbichig.montsame.mn/index.php?home http://khumuunbichig.montsame.mn/index.php?home [1] http://mongol.people.com.cn/ http://mongol.people.com.cn/ [2] http://www.nmg.xinhuanet.com/mg/ http://www.nmg.xinhuanet.com/mg/ [3] http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writmongol/websitesinmongolbichig.html http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writmongol/websitesinmongolbi...
- Symbiote 5y ago
  This site seems to use Unicode, unlike your first link. It's a bit disappointing that the British Library was unable to write the titles in their catalogue in Mongolian script. "ᠮᠣᠩ᠋ᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ ᠤᠨ ᠶᠡᠷᠦᠩᠬᠡᠢᠢᠯᠡᠭᠴᠢ ᠬ" https://president.mn/mng/ https://president.mn/mng/
  - gumby 5y ago
    The author mentions/complains about that late in the essay.
retrac 5y ago
Not that unusual. Japanese, Korean, and traditional Chinese are primarily written vertically, in columns right to left: https://i.imgur.com/Jai2Qcm.png https://i.imgur.com/Jai2Qcm.png The common exception is technical works, and translations, which from the early 20th century onward are often horizontal and left-to-right to allow using the Latin alphabet, math equations, etc. Well, not quite. That was the situation until very recently. It's now mostly horizontal. Almost everything on a computer is horizontal. The first Korean newspaper to switch to horizontal text did so in 1988. It was universal by the mid-90s. Japanese is probably the most resistant and has its traditionalist holdouts in novels and some print newspapers. But horizontal text is ascendant there too. While those languages are basically compatible with writing in any direction, this shift is mostly because software can't handle vertical text. It was terrible when computer typesetting first took off. Even today for publication quality, it probably requires specialized software. So the answer is that UI's don't handle it. It's almost always a disaster in software. The traditional writing system of several major world languages is simply not properly supported by most software, and much still fails completely. An observation to close with: perhaps ironically, the Mongolian script is from the Syriac alphabet that went along the silk road route, and is distantly related to the Latin alphabet. It was rotated 90 degrees probably for no other reason than because it works well alongside vertical Chinese. It seems that rotating to get along is a recurring theme.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Modern Chinese punctuation marks don't really work in a vertical format.
  - retrac 5y ago
    I'm not fluent, but how so? The 。or ，or 、seem fine when centred. The《 and 》 or 「 and 」get rotated and also look fine. The bigger issue is Arabic numerals, and mixed case or long Latin alphabet words. (Though 2 - 4 letter acronyms like USA or FIFA, one per square, actually fit almost perfectly.) I always thought bracket quotes looked exactly like what they are, a container for words: https://i.imgur.com/IlwSjnZ.png https://i.imgur.com/IlwSjnZ.png -- For example, this sentence is written in "vertical Chinese". (Screenshot generated with LibreOffice Write, which can just about handle basic documents in vertical format.)

AlotOfReading 5y ago

The short answer is that they don't. Android flat out doesn't support vertical scripts so there's a library that reimplements a lot of UI components. iOS basically doesn't, but it's somewhat easier to work around. Chrome and Firefox can render the characters with appropriate fonts, but that can be uncommon and applications using them screw up. Electron apps generally render vertical scripts LTR for example.

scarmig 5y ago

This is based off 30 minutes of naive research; if someone knows better, please correct me. (No better way to get information than to say something wrong on the Internet.) Most of the time, major or more sophisticated apps will just use Cyrillic (in Mongolia) or be written in Mandarin (in Inner Mongolia, CN). There are, however, web pages in the traditional script, which you can look at to get a sense of how a UI layout for a vertical script might work [0][1][2]. I also found a website with a full list, with many broken links [3]. From an encoding perspective, Unicode historically hasn't meshed well with Mongolian script, because of a surfeit of homographs. From what I can gather, Menksoft supports the most widely used alternative encoding method, which isn't Unicode-compatible. This apparently makes searching and indexing traditional Mongolian pages hard. [0] http://khumuunbichig.montsame.mn/index.php?home http://khumuunbichig.montsame.mn/index.php?home [1] http://mongol.people.com.cn/ http://mongol.people.com.cn/ [2] http://www.nmg.xinhuanet.com/mg/ http://www.nmg.xinhuanet.com/mg/ [3] http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writmongol/websitesinmongolbichig.html http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writmongol/websitesinmongolbi...

Symbiote 5y ago
This site seems to use Unicode, unlike your first link. It's a bit disappointing that the British Library was unable to write the titles in their catalogue in Mongolian script. "ᠮᠣᠩ᠋ᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ ᠤᠨ ᠶᠡᠷᠦᠩᠬᠡᠢᠢᠯᠡᠭᠴᠢ ᠬ" https://president.mn/mng/ https://president.mn/mng/
- gumby 5y ago
  The author mentions/complains about that late in the essay.

retrac 5y ago

Not that unusual. Japanese, Korean, and traditional Chinese are primarily written vertically, in columns right to left: https://i.imgur.com/Jai2Qcm.png https://i.imgur.com/Jai2Qcm.png The common exception is technical works, and translations, which from the early 20th century onward are often horizontal and left-to-right to allow using the Latin alphabet, math equations, etc. Well, not quite. That was the situation until very recently. It's now mostly horizontal. Almost everything on a computer is horizontal. The first Korean newspaper to switch to horizontal text did so in 1988. It was universal by the mid-90s. Japanese is probably the most resistant and has its traditionalist holdouts in novels and some print newspapers. But horizontal text is ascendant there too. While those languages are basically compatible with writing in any direction, this shift is mostly because software can't handle vertical text. It was terrible when computer typesetting first took off. Even today for publication quality, it probably requires specialized software. So the answer is that UI's don't handle it. It's almost always a disaster in software. The traditional writing system of several major world languages is simply not properly supported by most software, and much still fails completely. An observation to close with: perhaps ironically, the Mongolian script is from the Syriac alphabet that went along the silk road route, and is distantly related to the Latin alphabet. It was rotated 90 degrees probably for no other reason than because it works well alongside vertical Chinese. It seems that rotating to get along is a recurring theme.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
Modern Chinese punctuation marks don't really work in a vertical format.
- retrac 5y ago
  I'm not fluent, but how so? The 。or ，or 、seem fine when centred. The《 and 》 or 「 and 」get rotated and also look fine. The bigger issue is Arabic numerals, and mixed case or long Latin alphabet words. (Though 2 - 4 letter acronyms like USA or FIFA, one per square, actually fit almost perfectly.) I always thought bracket quotes looked exactly like what they are, a container for words: https://i.imgur.com/IlwSjnZ.png https://i.imgur.com/IlwSjnZ.png -- For example, this sentence is written in "vertical Chinese". (Screenshot generated with LibreOffice Write, which can just about handle basic documents in vertical format.)