On Sun, 29 May 2011 08:11:49 -0400, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Vide infra.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
> To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:32:57 AM
> Subject: Re: World's last handwritten newspaper
>
[Following comment assumed to be from P.T.D.; markup failed in Opera
e-mail --nb]

> Lots of examples of ordinary (i.e. messy) handwriting; unfortunately the
> transcriptions into print use an especially ugly typewriter (or
> computer?) naskh-derived font.

That's most unfortunate. I don't think I've seen typeritten Arabic (it
must look rather awful), at least, not recently. Creating text for screens
differes from preparing it for print; print has much better resolution,
although recent screens in handheld devices (such as "smart phones",
really computers) have quite-good resolution.

Looking at the assignment of code points in Unicode for Arabic suggests
that the creators of Unicode have been rather slow to realize how
essential it is to use proper forms (initial, medial, final, and
stand-alone), to have shaping and joining, along with (at least for
Nasta`liq) positioning of (what? Phrases? Letter groups?).

More generally, I was delighted to realize that it was routine to see
"Mtskheta" rendered within recent e-mail text using Georgian: მცხეთა. I
had been curious, but not ambitious, to see which letters render that
wondrous "Mtskh" cluster; looking at the Unicode chart, they appear to be
[man] [can] [zen]*, which surprised this naïve amateur. (It seems that the
Unicode 3.0 code chart rendered [can] totally above the writing line, btw;
that confused me). This was on another mailing list
(howthingswork@yahoogroups.com), which has a liberal policy regarding
topics; we have just a very few amateur linguists, including Paul. K., who
is a senior engineering manager (or such) at Dell Computers. His knowledge
of other scripts and languages is better than mine; he's a Renaissance
man. The rest of the subscribers never complain; it's a civil list.
*Mkhreduli, of course.

[Patrick Chew]
> For other calligraphic handwriting (particularly Arabic, rather than
> Perso-spheric), please refer to:
>
> <http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Arabic-Practical-Introduction-Script/dp/0198151500/>
>
>
> {The Review comments at Amazon are worth a look, as well. --nb}

[P.T.D. again]
> Yes, this has been the standard reference for half a century. Our Arabic
> T.A. in 1974, who was Egyptian, noted that Westerners write funny
> because they learned it from a book (i.e. naskh) and tried to get us to
> use ruq`a, but the way he used the chalk on the blackboard, as if it
> were a broad-edge pen, and very slowly with great pressure, made it look
> quite unfeasible.

He would have benefitted greatly from a good closed-circuit TV with a
large screen, using a qalam or other pen and paper. Unfortunately, such
equipment was quite costly, then.

> BTW the price they're asking is obscene.

I surely can't argue that point! OUP had a temporary discount on TWWS.
They priced it at 1/3 of its usual list; that's why I have a copy. I don't
begrudge theil list price; it must have been a bear to typeset and
proofread. (Speaking of proofreading, I was astonished when, quite some
time ago, I typed in one of the lesser-quality copies of The Chaos, by G.
Nolst Trenité. Proofreading it was unexpectedly difficult!)
(Regarding that poem, it's a classic that I would recommend to any
Qalamite who doesn't know it. If you're not a native speaker of English,
its pronunciation is British; as well, you'll quickly note that it's a
remarkable collection of inconsistent pronunciations in English. The
history of its publication on the 'Net is interesting, as well.)

> Both <nasta`liq> and <ruq`ah> styles of Perso-Arabic have decent fonts
> available:
>
> <nasta`liq>: c.f.
> <http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/Fonts/nafeesNastaleeq.html>
> {There are several pages of interest at CRULP. --nb}
>
> <ruq`ah>: googling for "font ruqah" will pull up a number of links...
>
> Please also note that modern typsetting for Arabic script in a number of
> different languages has made extremely great advances and one of the best
> typesetting software available can be found at: http://www.decotype.com/,

[.P.T.D.]
> When including links in email, don't type punctuation after them without
> a space.

Mr. Chew did that for his other links, iirc. I habitually enclose them (as
did he) inside what have been called "bra" [<] and "ket" [>], using the
sometimes extremely-witty, informal Victor-Borge-like brief (monosyllabic,
if possible) verbalizations of just about any printable symbols in
"extended ASCII" at a minimum.
[These were only rarely officially recognized, i.e. "interrobang"
(U+203D), but when a programmer needed to speak specimens of code by
voice, they saved time. Typical terms were "bang" for [!] and iirc
"splat" for [⌘] (U+2318, {caps -->} place of interest); they were
collected by Eric S. Raymond long ago. Imho, unfortunately, his list was
revised more than once to reduce the wittiness.]

Bruce Schneier, whose advice on security is particularly realistic in a
time when security theater (provided free at any airport check-in) is
commonplace, has a monthly newsletter that until recently, and perhaps
still, has a software bug of this category that disables every blessed
link he provides, and he provides a lot.

> where the Tasmeem product line has been developed to not only account for
> calligraphic styles of Persian and Arabic, but also allows for
> geolocal-specific stylistics and the capability for individual
> adjustments as felt to be necessary.
>
> WRT Indic fonting, it is not only Malayalam that has traditionally had
> 'stacking' consonants, but also other Dravidian (southern) scripts, as
> well as Hindi. With the advances made in typographical technology and the
> advent of Open Type Fonts, more fonts are available that accommodate
> traditional forms of typesetting/writing.
>
> regards,
> -Patrick Chew

[nb]
> Patrick Chew was most helpful in offering his expertise on the topic.
{snips}

> Mr. Bodley:
>
> With regards to specimens of <nasta`liq>, please refer to:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Nastaliq-Persian-Hands-Present/dp/1568592132/
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
{snips}

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
{Micro-blog (non-Twitter) goes here}