6 ms·

Perhaps my history is wrong but it seems like an unfortunate accident that some of these languages must have not had much printing press and typewriter use so t

Perhaps my history is wrong but it seems like an unfortunate accident that some of these languages must have not had much printing press and typewriter use so they retained their cursive scripts a few decades longer than English and now they're being frozen in time because unicode can accommodate them while they're still popular. I guess the reason we don't care about cursive English unicode is because traditional printing couldn't do it so we've already adapted to separate characters while those Arabs and what-not must have still been writing mostly by hand. Does that sound likely?

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Nothing in Unicode prevents rendering Western languages in cursive. It's just that nobody wants to do the intensive work to generate the layouts and manage the required fonts as was done with Harfbuzz.
- winety 4y ago
  There are cursive typefaces for the Latin script, e.g. [1]. There might even be some free ones. Making (good looking) fonts is hard work, but I don’t think making cursive fonts is that much harder. [1]: https://www.dizajndesign.sk/en/font/skolske https://www.dizajndesign.sk/en/font/skolske
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  That supports my idea. People don't much care about cursive in English because we're already adapted to isolated characters.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Western print letters are fairly faithful replicas of western handwriting, specifically that of humanist minuscule (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_minuscule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_minuscule>). Like there's been some ligatures and shorthand, but for the most part, this type of script has always been an extremely printing press-friendly affair with distinct letters of reasonably uniform width. Cursive has existed alongside print letters going all the way back to antiquity.
- jahewson 4y ago
  True indeed, though it was not these Italian scripts that were first to be printed, but the equally typesetting-friendly Gothic blackletter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter
- tengwar2 4y ago
  But humanist minuscule is not a cursive script: the letters are separate. Cursive does not mean just hand-written, but written in a style designed for haste achieved by not lifting the pen between letters.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Right, my point is they have existed alongside each other almost as long as the latin alphabet as we recognize it. Cursive is a bit younger, but they both trace from antiquity. Both forms existed before print, during the inception of print, and long after print.
DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
> while those Arabs and what-not must have still been writing mostly by hand. Does that sound likely? It does sound rather snarky
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Do you not see the hypocrisy in your response? I can understand the question seeming blunt, but not snarky. Your comment on the other hand… /snark
  - DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
    totally disagree. You just don't say "those $other-ethnicity and what-not" where I come from, it sounds super-disrespectful.
EdiX 4y ago
> it seems like an unfortunate accident that some of these languages must have not had much printing press and typewriter use it wasn't an accident, the printing press was banned by the ottoman empire in 1485.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
abdulhaq 4y ago
Or is it actually fortunate? The delay in properly incorporating Arabic into the IT environment gave the rendering infrastructure time to enrich and develop more elaborate textual representation such as advanced ligatures. This means Arabic text rendering has not had to be bent into the plain linear forms that Latin text more naturally falls into.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  Instead it's bent into the continuous squiggly curve forms that handwriting naturally falls into but it's not written by hand so it doesn't gain that value.
svat 4y ago
No, this does not match history. Speaking for Indic scripts, which I know best: the first Devanagari books were printed in the 1700s. While this is a few centuries later than Gutenberg's printing press c. 1450, by the time Unicode (or even computers) came into existence, there were already several centuries of "much printing press and typewriter use" (ok, maybe only a century or so of typewriters). Do you really think "those Arabs and what-not" did not have printing before Unicode condescended to "accommodate them" in 1988? Traditional printing could very well do Indic scripts, and so could typewriters. And so could computers: in fact, Unicode for Indic scripts takes inspiration from ISCII, an Indian standard extending ASCII for encoding scripts on computers, that dates back to 1983.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  > Do you really think […] I downvoted you for this: our guidelines require you to assume the strongest interpretation of the comment you are responding to. From my perspective, you’re comment is needlessly reactionary to a thoughtful, well stated question. Sorry to include this lecture, but it helps my conscious to avoid drive-by downvoting. I’m very much open to a rebuttal.
  - svat 4y ago
    Thanks. In fact, I did consider the guidelines: my impulse was to write "Think about what you're suggesting […] Consider whether this really seems plausible", but I thought that's too confrontational/focuses too much on the person, and "Do you really think…" was a softer/more neutral way of phrasing it. Apparently not! (This is a different part of the guidelines than "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation" BTW: the comment very explicitly suggests non-Latin scripts not having had "much printing press and typewriter use", so I don't think there's much scope for interpretation there. And in fact, the idea is inherently a condescending and colonialist one—of Western superiority over unsophisticated "those" people—even though it may well be held innocently and stated as such. But I do take the point about not responding to the person, and responding kindly to the idea instead. Will try harder, as I think I usually do.) (BTW "reactionary" means something specific…)

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

Nothing in Unicode prevents rendering Western languages in cursive. It's just that nobody wants to do the intensive work to generate the layouts and manage the required fonts as was done with Harfbuzz.

winety 4y ago
There are cursive typefaces for the Latin script, e.g. [1]. There might even be some free ones. Making (good looking) fonts is hard work, but I don’t think making cursive fonts is that much harder. [1]: https://www.dizajndesign.sk/en/font/skolske https://www.dizajndesign.sk/en/font/skolske
sacrosancty 4y ago
That supports my idea. People don't much care about cursive in English because we're already adapted to isolated characters.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Western print letters are fairly faithful replicas of western handwriting, specifically that of humanist minuscule (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_minuscule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_minuscule>). Like there's been some ligatures and shorthand, but for the most part, this type of script has always been an extremely printing press-friendly affair with distinct letters of reasonably uniform width. Cursive has existed alongside print letters going all the way back to antiquity.

jahewson 4y ago
True indeed, though it was not these Italian scripts that were first to be printed, but the equally typesetting-friendly Gothic blackletter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter
tengwar2 4y ago
But humanist minuscule is not a cursive script: the letters are separate. Cursive does not mean just hand-written, but written in a style designed for haste achieved by not lifting the pen between letters.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Right, my point is they have existed alongside each other almost as long as the latin alphabet as we recognize it. Cursive is a bit younger, but they both trace from antiquity. Both forms existed before print, during the inception of print, and long after print.

DemocracyFTW2 4y ago

> while those Arabs and what-not must have still been writing mostly by hand. Does that sound likely? It does sound rather snarky

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Do you not see the hypocrisy in your response? I can understand the question seeming blunt, but not snarky. Your comment on the other hand… /snark
- DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
  totally disagree. You just don't say "those $other-ethnicity and what-not" where I come from, it sounds super-disrespectful.

EdiX 4y ago

> it seems like an unfortunate accident that some of these languages must have not had much printing press and typewriter use it wasn't an accident, the printing press was banned by the ottoman empire in 1485.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

abdulhaq 4y ago

Or is it actually fortunate? The delay in properly incorporating Arabic into the IT environment gave the rendering infrastructure time to enrich and develop more elaborate textual representation such as advanced ligatures. This means Arabic text rendering has not had to be bent into the plain linear forms that Latin text more naturally falls into.

sacrosancty 4y ago
Instead it's bent into the continuous squiggly curve forms that handwriting naturally falls into but it's not written by hand so it doesn't gain that value.

svat 4y ago

No, this does not match history. Speaking for Indic scripts, which I know best: the first Devanagari books were printed in the 1700s. While this is a few centuries later than Gutenberg's printing press c. 1450, by the time Unicode (or even computers) came into existence, there were already several centuries of "much printing press and typewriter use" (ok, maybe only a century or so of typewriters). Do you really think "those Arabs and what-not" did not have printing before Unicode condescended to "accommodate them" in 1988? Traditional printing could very well do Indic scripts, and so could typewriters. And so could computers: in fact, Unicode for Indic scripts takes inspiration from ISCII, an Indian standard extending ASCII for encoding scripts on computers, that dates back to 1983.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
> Do you really think […] I downvoted you for this: our guidelines require you to assume the strongest interpretation of the comment you are responding to. From my perspective, you’re comment is needlessly reactionary to a thoughtful, well stated question. Sorry to include this lecture, but it helps my conscious to avoid drive-by downvoting. I’m very much open to a rebuttal.
- svat 4y ago
  Thanks. In fact, I did consider the guidelines: my impulse was to write "Think about what you're suggesting […] Consider whether this really seems plausible", but I thought that's too confrontational/focuses too much on the person, and "Do you really think…" was a softer/more neutral way of phrasing it. Apparently not! (This is a different part of the guidelines than "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation" BTW: the comment very explicitly suggests non-Latin scripts not having had "much printing press and typewriter use", so I don't think there's much scope for interpretation there. And in fact, the idea is inherently a condescending and colonialist one—of Western superiority over unsophisticated "those" people—even though it may well be held innocently and stated as such. But I do take the point about not responding to the person, and responding kindly to the idea instead. Will try harder, as I think I usually do.) (BTW "reactionary" means something specific…)