tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 25 08:43:26 2003

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Re: Klingon Unicode

Mark E. Shoulson ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Thus Krenath ([email protected]):

> I and a friend of mine (Mark Reed, who occasionally posts here) have 
> taken standard unicode fonts for Windows and, usng freeware font 
> editors and purchased copies of the KLI pIqaDmey font, managed to 
> encode the pIqaD font in the appropriate section of the fonts, thus 
> allowing for typing in tlhIngan and English together without changing 
> font faces. The Unicode proposal is linked here: 
> http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1643/n1643.htm and is what we 
> followed. Unfortunately, the source fonts are copyrighted, so there's 
> no way I could post links to files. I would love, however, to see 
> converted fonts made available for sale on a new font disk from the 
> PLI one day, as we can currently only send tlhIngan-font emails to 
> each other and no one else. Bleh.

Although the Klingon proposal was not accepted (much to our annoyance 
and that of Michael Everson, our Friend in High Places in Unicode-dom -- 
there's an article about him in today's New York Times; see 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/technology/circuits/25code.html), 
there is actually a fair amount of support for Klingon in several 
popular Unicode fonts.

See, somewhere along the line, some folks putting together the Linux 
kernel decided that Linux should officially support Klingon (a hack of 
an OS supporting a hack of a language went the reasoning--hack being 
meant in a positive sense) and so encoded Klingon in the "Private Use 
Area" of Unicode.  This is a chunk of space where individual companies 
or systems can encode whatever they like; it will never be used 
"officially".  Quite a few Unicode fonts have Klingon characters in 
those very spots (these include James Kass' "Code2000" font, and the 
ClearlyU fonts; google around for them).  Michael Everson and John Cowan 
have also compiled a "registry" of unofficial encodings for various 
constructed-language characters in the Private Use Area; see 
http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/ for that.

In fact, I'm even now working on a way to show issues of Qo'noS QonoS in 
Unicode pIqaD, if the reader so desires (it works, but the pIqaD 
characters are so much bigger than the non-pIqaD that punctuation gets 
kind of lost).

(Unfortunately, the pIqaD section of the PUA steps on some spaces that 
Adobe also likes to use there, and Adobe often wins.  So at least on my 
computer, under one browser, when I look at pIqaD Unicode pages, among 
the pIqaD characters are also copyright-signs, pieces of brackets, etc.)

>I find that most email programs have a bit of difficulty with making it 
>easy to type alternate Unicode characters.  Some day, I'd like to be able 
>to just hit a function key or hold down a shift or alt key and type easily 
>in pIqaD, switching easily and seamlessly between the two languages...

I'd like to get something going that would let me easily type much more 
of Unicode than just two languages.  Remapping a keyboard to another 
language is one thing; having a nice set of them you can easily flip 
through seems to be a little harder.  The text editor Yudit is a nice 
place to start with respect to exploring Unicode; it's highly Unicode 
compliant.  I have keymaps for it that let you type "tlh" and it shows 
the pIqaD for it, etc...

~mark

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