Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:18:30 -0500, Peter T. Daniels
> <grammatim@...> wrote:
>
> > Along those lines, the computer folk can be proud(?) of being
> > responsible for the atrifying of cursive script.
>
> Yes; however, the excessively-fussy and ornate letterforms we were taught
> in school are borderline impractical.

"You" are a lot older than "us" ...

> I read recently about a diferent
> style that is easy to write and learn, and looks good as well.

Care to identify? Could this be the "italic revolution in handwriting"
in England associated with Alfred Fairbank in the 1940s?

> Wouldn't you say that typewriters also had a significant influence?

No. Typewriting was far from ubiquitous and defined as lower-class -- no
businessman would type his own letters; that's why he had a secretary or
a steno perched on his knee.

> Perhaps making decent-quality Arabic text has made up for that.

??

> Seems to me that someone with experience in rendering good Arabic might
> try to create very-good Latin continuous script; the matters of shaping
> and joining should have some modest degree of commonality.

There are plenty of "script" computer fonts, some of which are clever
enough to fool you for a word or two, until you notice that the same
letter is _identical_ throughout. There used to be ads for "your very
own handwriting font," where you wrote a specific list of words that had
all the different forms you needed, and they sent you a font made from
them.

> Splines can be very beautiful, when arbitrary curves are needed; after
> all, afaik, all curves in computer typography are splines (even when
> circles could be used).
>
> Btw, is there any need or use for quartic or higher-order splines in
> computer typography?

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--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...