While this except gives a good idea of interaction between script
and technology, the entire article is worth reading. The section
which follows this updates Unicode and syllabics info.


http://www.itk.ca/communications/technology-syllabics.php

Syllabics and Technology

The syllabic writing system was meant to be mechanically printed
right from the onset, and Evans actually produced crude letterpress
forms with the scant materials he had available. Letterpress type
and variants remained virtually the only method of mechanically
reproducing syllabics until the 1950's where stencil photo-etching
and offset lithography eventually took over.

The 1960's and 70's saw the birth of "office automation", and the
Inuktitut language was not far behind. IBM, in collaboration with
Inuit in what is now the territory of Nunavut, developed an
Inuktitut typeface "golf ball" for their innovative Selectric
typewriter. However space limitations did not allow for all of the
syllabic characters, and an entire column (the AI-PAI-TAI column)
was dropped completely from the syllabary. The result was that two
characters were needed to represent sounds that previously only
required one.

Barely a decade had passed, and personal computers began to make
serious inroads, particularly in the processing of text. But early
personal computers were not well adapted to typography and it wasn't
until the Apple Macintosh in 1984 and its ability to graphically
display typefaces, that the next big revolution in syllabics would
take place. With the laser printer and the PostScript language
introduced in 1987, the revolution in "desktop publishing" was born.
The first Inuktitut syllabic fonts appeared right at this time,
namely Umiujaq from Nunavut, followed by WNunavik from Nunavik.

The 1990s saw an explosion of Inuktitut fonts, notably the project
co-produced between the Baffin School Board and Apple Computer.
Nunatsiaq News, the "official" newspaper of the North, also
contributed with the newspaper-friendly Nunacom font. In Nunavik,
the original WN Nunavik was refined with two major revisions.

From a typographic perspective, many problems persisted with the use
of Inuktitut syllabics. The most acute problem was the
incompatibility between various syllabic fonts. A document created
with one font could only be viewed by that font, as font designers
had no external reference in which code points were assigned.
Spacing was a big problem, and the original design of the syllabary
did not lend itself well to modern typesetting standards for
legibility and readability, especially on low-resolution computer
screens. In brief, syllabic type design did not have the luxury of
time to evolve, as had Roman orthography.

Suzanne