Re: [css3-text] script categories, 'bicameral', 'discrete', Unicode links and more

fantasai (2011-04-16):
> On 04/15/2011 09:24 PM, Asmus Freytag wrote:
>> 
>> What I'm driving at with this example is that the acceptability of certain styles of layout (hyphenation, letterspacing for justification, letterspacing for emphasis) are definitely not associated with the script (…) but with local conventions (…).
> 
> This is true, but I think the ability of the script to accept spacing without looking broken can be considered a script property.

I tend to think so, too. At least, justification with letter spacing isn’t as alien to people having German as their only or first (written) language as Asmus made it sound.

> Spacing between Arabic characters is, afaict, very broken.

In usual typefaces it is, but there have been attempts – some more serious than others – at discrete, non-shaping arabic glyphs that probably would allow spacing, too, e.g. <http://www.arabetics.com/>.

>> … "Arabic is never hyphenated" (turns out to be false on the script level, but true on the language level. Uighur, written in Arabic script, can apparently be hyphenated).

People always mix up font, script, writing system, orthography and language. Apparently the folks involved in the Unicode consortium aren’t totally exempt.

Received on Sunday, 1 May 2011 22:38:17 UTC