Re: Vai

At 12:20 +0000 2005-08-11, Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > It seems only equitable, however, that the Vai should be able, as
> > the English are, to sit down and keyboard their own set of visual
>> glyphs, transferring a visual image from mind to screen.
>
>I'm not sure about that. If they have cultivated their own script to
>be different, perhaps they should bear the cost. While I agree with
>the goal, I don't think equity comes into it.

I will develop a QWERTY-based keyboard layout, because that is what
they will have on their hardware, and as they are all familiar with
the Latin alphabet (English being the official language of Liberia).

> > It seems equitable also that they should have an input method that
>> requires them to choose a glyph from the set they are familiar with
>> and not the 'superset'.
>
>I would argue that if there is only one method, it is better to
>provide the full set. It's probably better to be forced to look
>sophisticated than to be forced to look uneducated.

I would argue that it is always bad to provide software that
restricts people's ability to enter rare characters. Apple's extended
Irish and US keyboards let users type a great many Latin letters not
just used in English. See
http://www.evertype.com/celtscript/ga-keys-x.html for a spec.

> >If there is in fact a dual orthography this should be understood and
> > not compared to our expectations of one standardized orthography?
>
>Does anyone know how standard the reduced set is?

Come on, people. Look at the syllabary charts from the children's
primers in the proposal document and do the counting yourselves.

That's what we had to do to put the superset together.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com