John H. Jenkins wrote:

>
> On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 08:19 AM, áÐ3áS•áS¤áˆ* áЫáЕá‰Ýብ
> wrote:
>
> > Do people here know of other cases where advances in publishing
> > technology influenced the loss, or gain, of characters?
> >
>
> Oriental typography tended to shift more towards a horizontal,
> left-to-right layout from its traditional vertical layout because of
> the limits of Western technologies. My understanding is that type and
> 20th century typesetting technologies also had an influence on limiting
> the calligraphic range of Arabic books, although I don't know this for
> sure.

Newspapers in much of the Arabic-writing world have always had at least
their headlines done by hand onto lithographic plates, since metal type
can only imitate the slanting styles used for Persian, Urdu, etc., with
great difficulty.

For quite a while, the ban on printing the Qur'an was evaded by using
lithographed handwritten masters.

> I've also been told that Latin typography lost many of its swashes and
> ligatures as more automation came into the typesetting process.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...