tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 26 14:37:43 2003
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Re: [tlhingan-hol] RE: Klingon Unicode-permission to re-post
Any bits of my end of the conversation are assumed to be public domain (as
I posted them publicly in the first place).
So you're perfectly welcome to disseminate anything I might have said that
could be misconstrued as informative :)
At 02:31 PM 9/25/03 -0400, you wrote:
>May I post this to the LJ Klingon group?
>
>jIqel ghojwI'
><batlh wo' yejHaD je vItoy'mo' jIHem>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark E. Shoulson [mailto:[email protected]]
>Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 8:43 AM
>To: tlhingan-hol
>Subject: Re: Klingon Unicode
>
>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