At 08:00 -0400 2005-08-10, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>Perhaps ignorance of this basic fact is what led computer engineers to
>think that roman-based input is appropriate for other syllabaries, where
>there _was_ no tradition of roman spelling.

Even so, some communities are so small that there is no opportunity

>Why would anyone _want_ to write Vai with a computer?

Wow. That's a pretty condescending view.

>If there's any accuracy at all in Scribner & Cole, the Vai script is
>used in a very limited set of contexts where computerization
>wouldn't be appropriate
>anyway.

Nonsense. Yes, nonsense. At a minimum one could use it to prepare
primers for publication rather than writing them by hand.

In point of fact, we have worked to encode Vai because Vai people
wanted us to because they want to use Vai on computers.

>(When the Vai syllabary proved too big for one font, we simply scanned
>script specimens and dropped them into the WWS text.)
>
>((And, computer engineers, don't start that bullshit about fonts
>accommodating thousands of characters -- in 1993 they couldn't.
>Period.))

To produce the Vai encoding proposal, I used a number of 8-bit fonts.
And one could do that in 1993 too. (In 1993 there were no Vai fonts,
though.)
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com