On 2011-6-23 17:13, Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> This query makes me realize that dilettantes such as yrs trly can be
> stymied, maybe totally, by stylized versions of glyphs that native users
> have no trouble understanding. As with the different styles of Arabic,
> perhaps a comprehensive representation of the various writing systems
> should try its best to include specimens of variant typefaces and styles.

A foreigner cannot readily tell what's essential and what's analogous to
serifs. (Hilariously, I've seen more than one Angerthas font in which
the dots separating groups of runes in Tolkien's chart are included as
part of an adjacent glyph.)

Nakanishi's slim /Writing Systems of the World/ goes some way to
addressing the problem, by illustrating each major script with the front
page of a newspaper: we thus get to see body type and typically two or
more varieties of display type.

The existence of Chinese texts printed at sizes such that I can't see
all the details implies that there are redundancies to which a practiced
reader is sensitive -- though they may defy description!

--
Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org *\\* www.zazzle.com/tamfang