Re: [css-text] letter-spacing tests

Arle,

Due credit should be given to Tom Milo of DecoType, who many years ago 
shook up my own understanding of Arabic. In more general terms, the 
understanding I obtained from him regarding Arabic alerted me to the 
degree to which we can tend to analyse writing systems in terms of how 
previous and obsolete typesetting technologies attempted to represent 
them. So these days I tend to approach implementation of writing systems 
in fonts with one eye on what scribes did in manuscripts and the other 
eye on what is possible in digital technologies. The products of 
intervening technologies -- handset metal type, hot metal composing 
machines, phototype -- are relegated to stylistic design resources, and 
their technical mechanisms either ignored or rigorously questioned.

This applies even to my own writing system, which I now favour handling 
without ligature glyphs.
http://www.tiro.com/John/Hudson-Brill-DECK.pdf
pp.23–25

JH

Received on Friday, 10 October 2014 19:41:57 UTC