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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 centur

by 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…)
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    We still disagree, but I appreciate your reply and it is indeed logically consistent. Thanks for the explanation.
sacrosancty 4y ago
Devanagari looks like separate characters to me, just like English. Are you talking about a cursive script where each character's shape has to be modified to link to it neighbors? I'm specifically only talking about cursive scripts, not just any non-English alphabet.
- svat 4y ago
  For example, in Devanagari, the sequence • U+0915: DEVANAGARI LETTER KA (क) • U+093F: DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I (ि) gives कि where the vowel sign not only attaches to the letter, but (in this case) happens to be to the left of it. Similarly, the sequence • U+‎0915: DEVANAGARI LETTER KA (क) • U+‎094D: DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA ( ्) • ‎U+0937: DEVANAGARI LETTER SSA (ष) • ‎U+0941: DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN U ( ु) gives क्षु where the shapes of the "characters" are indeed modified based on which characters appear next to them. This is kind of touched upon in the second section in the original post titled "Indic scripts": https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2017/01/15/breaking-our-latin-1-assumptions/#indic-scripts https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2017/01/15/breaking-our-l... This is handled in traditional printing (and in modern Opentype fonts) by simply having separate pieces of type for every possible combination of consonants (there are a few hundred, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Devanagari_conjuncts&oldid=1076864346 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Devanagari_conjun...), and then having separate pieces of type for vowel signs (which have to have different lengths depending on the width of the consonant cluster, but a handful of lengths for each will do), the same way any good Latin-script font will include ligatures like ﬁ, and will also include separate glyphs for the accent marks (things like ´ ` ¨ ˆ ˜ which can be placed over letters to give é à ü î ñ and so on). Incidentally, Gutenberg's very first Bible itself used nearly 300 letter forms, including ligatures and variants of several letter (see e.g. https://www.oldbookappreciator.com/libraryofhistoricaltype/exhibits/show/gutenbergsb42/b42type https://www.oldbookappreciator.com/libraryofhistoricaltype/e... ) (About "cursive" vs "separate" letters: conceptually it's not such a big difference, because there are only finitely many letters/characters in the script, so as long as you carefully specify the ending position of each glyph for each possible choice of following glyph, you produce the appearance of everything being joined. Indeed that's how traditional printing and modern fonts do it too. And for that matter, cursive fonts in English: try playing with https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cedarville+Cursive https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cedarville+Cursive which if it had been made with slightly better kerning rules would likely modify shapes of letters depending on adjacent letters. Maybe one of these fonts do it? https://fontsgeek.com/search/?q=cursive https://fontsgeek.com/search/?q=cursive )

by svat 4y ago

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…)
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  We still disagree, but I appreciate your reply and it is indeed logically consistent. Thanks for the explanation.

sacrosancty 4y ago

Devanagari looks like separate characters to me, just like English. Are you talking about a cursive script where each character's shape has to be modified to link to it neighbors? I'm specifically only talking about cursive scripts, not just any non-English alphabet.

svat 4y ago
For example, in Devanagari, the sequence • U+0915: DEVANAGARI LETTER KA (क) • U+093F: DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I (ि) gives कि where the vowel sign not only attaches to the letter, but (in this case) happens to be to the left of it. Similarly, the sequence • U+‎0915: DEVANAGARI LETTER KA (क) • U+‎094D: DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA ( ्) • ‎U+0937: DEVANAGARI LETTER SSA (ष) • ‎U+0941: DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN U ( ु) gives क्षु where the shapes of the "characters" are indeed modified based on which characters appear next to them. This is kind of touched upon in the second section in the original post titled "Indic scripts": https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2017/01/15/breaking-our-latin-1-assumptions/#indic-scripts https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2017/01/15/breaking-our-l... This is handled in traditional printing (and in modern Opentype fonts) by simply having separate pieces of type for every possible combination of consonants (there are a few hundred, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Devanagari_conjuncts&oldid=1076864346 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Devanagari_conjun...), and then having separate pieces of type for vowel signs (which have to have different lengths depending on the width of the consonant cluster, but a handful of lengths for each will do), the same way any good Latin-script font will include ligatures like ﬁ, and will also include separate glyphs for the accent marks (things like ´ ` ¨ ˆ ˜ which can be placed over letters to give é à ü î ñ and so on). Incidentally, Gutenberg's very first Bible itself used nearly 300 letter forms, including ligatures and variants of several letter (see e.g. https://www.oldbookappreciator.com/libraryofhistoricaltype/exhibits/show/gutenbergsb42/b42type https://www.oldbookappreciator.com/libraryofhistoricaltype/e... ) (About "cursive" vs "separate" letters: conceptually it's not such a big difference, because there are only finitely many letters/characters in the script, so as long as you carefully specify the ending position of each glyph for each possible choice of following glyph, you produce the appearance of everything being joined. Indeed that's how traditional printing and modern fonts do it too. And for that matter, cursive fonts in English: try playing with https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cedarville+Cursive https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cedarville+Cursive which if it had been made with slightly better kerning rules would likely modify shapes of letters depending on adjacent letters. Maybe one of these fonts do it? https://fontsgeek.com/search/?q=cursive https://fontsgeek.com/search/?q=cursive )