Re: Vai - Clarifications

i18n@... wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > (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.))
>
> There is nothing wrong with scanning as a solution to your problem.
>
> But engineers (and perhaps you too) would have considered (and possibly
> rejected) the idea of using *multiple* smaller fonts to accomplish the
> task. It would have worked, but maybe that page or section wasn't worth
> the effort. Only you could have decided that at the time when faced with
> the task.

Now we're back to 20 days ago. "*Multiple* smaller fonts" is an idiotic
solution.

> I don't know what system you were using, so I can't say for sure whether
> fonts on your system supported thousands of characters then. But some
> systems had fonts that did - there were certainly large Asian fonts
> available on Windows by then.

System 7.1.

WorldScript II made two-byte fonts available. They came with TrueType
and so could not be used with PostScript printers. (PostScript fonts
were available, for ca. $3000 apiece.) I was not able to generate
PostScript fonts for those chapters, and if you had read page xxxvii you
would know that those chapters were outputted by an outside agency and
handled as camera-ready copy.

> Still, Ken Lunde also mentioned when speaking about his book that he
> spent a tone of time making special fonts in order to make the tables in
> his book, probably not unlike what you had to do. It wasn't that
> technology didn't support large fonts, it was that no fonts had the set
> of glyphs with related properties that he needed.

Perhaps those fonts had subsequent commercial value.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...