>Do people here know of other cases where advances in publishing
>technology influenced the loss, or gain, of characters?
The first person to adapt a typewriter to the Thai alphabet found that it
wasn't possible to fit all Thai characters onto the English layout. So he
omitted 2 consonants which were rarely used, and could be replaced by other
characters without changing the pronunciation. Those 2 characters have since
become obsolete.
The Irish language used to use a dot over a consonant, which altered the
pronunciation of the consonant. It has now been replaced by the letter h
after the consonant. In both cases, it is referred to as a seamhu
("SHAY-vu"). The dot disappeared quite recently - I have seen it in print in
very old textbooks. I don't know the cause of the change; I merely suspect
the convenience of using more widely available. (However modern Irish still
uses an acute accent (fada).)
Cormac