Custom Keyboard Layout
Clive Semmens (2335) 3135 posts |
Hmm. I think I can see the (convoluted, but workable) solution to this – if I can have/make a suitable keyboard driver. I type as I type now, using the font I have now for the display so that what I type appears as I type it, just as an old-fashioned Hindi typewriter produces what you type as you type it, the carriage not advancing for some of the diacritics so everything composes itself reasonably well (my font composes itself rather better than typewriters could). The finished file ends up with my esoteric encoding. I write an app that translates from syllables encoded in my esoteric way to the equivalent syllables encoded Unicode fashion, which can then be sent to other platforms to render how they will. I can also write an app that does the inverse process (or make the same app do both, of course) so that Unicode Devanagari files from other platforms can be decently composed on RISCOS. Whether that could be made to work on the fly I rather doubt, but given the speed of new RISCOS machines, perhaps. The old IKHG couldn’t have generated a handler that could do it, so it’s pretty certainly beyond my capabilities unless someone writes a very fancy new IKHG. But for offline conversion of files, no problem.
I suspect that’s a post-hoc rationalization. Old printed matter had accents over capital letters as well as lower case – perhaps not always, I don’t have a huge quantity of old printed material in French to check. Other things, such as asterisks, superior numbers, and sometime inverted commas, often go as high as accents on caps. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7952 posts |
The characters are usually designed for a visual effect within a defined space so, as you say, suggesting that the accents don’t fit is ascribing other motives for non-inclusion when it probably simply means the designer didn’t consider them to be of enough importance to allow the required space. |
Rick Murray (539) 13422 posts |
Printing press != Typewriter :-) I can imagine characters might have been lost in the early days of DOS as well (the default character set has few accents). Even Minitel – in VP5 mode, the only special character was ß. There were 15 accented lower case letters. In VP2 mode (if supported), there were 12 accented lower case letters and Â, É, È, and Ç. [stum1b page 30] |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3135 posts |
Exactly. Printers != early computer designers too. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3135 posts |
I suspect Minitel didn’t know the difference between eszett and beta, too… |
Chris Mahoney (1684) 2110 posts |
And let’s not even bring the Chinese/Japanese 阝 into the mix. Oh wait, I just did… |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3135 posts |
I sort of did a while back. But only to comment that Devanagari is a doddle by comparison. Edit – ah – you mean specifically the 阝 |
nemo (145) 2437 posts |
1. Diacritics were added to French in the mid 1500s Here’s an example of how tight the tang is on the sort (that is, how large the character is, and how small the block): |
nemo (145) 2437 posts |
And in a more modern era, here’s a different kind of “no room”. This is an optical font disc from a 1970s AM Varityper, which I’ve used extensively (and interfaced to a Beeb). Now this is an American device, so displays the typical American knowledge of and concern for other scripts and languages, but as you can see, diacritics are often a luxury. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3135 posts |
Apparently. I stand corrected. Wow. I wouldn’t want to be up against you in a court of law! On the other hand, I’d be very happy to be on the same team. My feeble evidence consists of a mere handful of 19th and early 20th century books, none of them set very tight. I used a variety of typesetting machines of various vintages between 1976 and 1983 (a rare beast, a member of the National Graphical Association mostly working freelance), but remember little about most of them never mind having photographic evidence of any of them. One of them (a Mergenthaler Linotype iirc) had its optical fonts on film on frames fitted on a drum; the one I remember best also used interchangeable drums which rotated and jumped up and down, but the printing was mechanical with a carbon ribbon like a typewriter, but the paper being hit from behind by a hammer. I think that was made by Varityper too. No idea how well, if at all, it coped with accents – I was typesetting Peace News in English on it – as a volunteer, the fastest typist who came on alternate Sundays for the last few hours before the paper went to bed to set anything that arrived at the last minute. My excuse, such as it is, is that I was riding a lot of different horses at the same time – as I did for most of my working life. I did six typesetting contracts over seven years, in total only about a couple of years, interspersed with teaching, lecturing, draughting (PCB layout and other), and programming contracts. Jack of all trades…(please don’t finish that for me…) One of my typesetting contracts was in Paris, and one in Lublin, Poland – each of only three or four weeks, and both setting in English (which was why they wanted an English freelancer). A friend wrote to me from Japan in 1983, inviting me to typeset for Hitachi there for a spell, but I declined the offer (for an amusing reason I’d rather not commit to the internet) and went to India instead – not to do typesetting. |