Marking a 75th Anniversary in Space History

...75 years and one month now, I regret that this is belated :-/

Hello everyone, I guess we've all been busy. I had wanted to take a moment
this past August 1st to reflect on the 75th anniversary (since Hamle 25,
1934 EC) of the Addis Zemen newspaper's last use of Hulet Neteb (Ethiopic
Wordspace) in articles in Vol 2. No. 13. In the next issue a week later
(Nahasse 2, 1934) Hulet Neteb was was found no more, gone without a word of
explanation, and in its place were the blank spaces in use today. Save for
the paper's title which curiously would continue to use it.

I've long considered the change in practice by the nation's leading
periodical a typographic turning point for the symbol as it entered into
the modern era of mass publishing. I'd really like to learn their rationale
for doing so. My best guess is that it may have been a cost saving move
-reducing ink expense by lowering the volume required, avoiding the cost of
producing more printing press tiles for the symbol as the paper's size grew
in pages (assumes tile technology was in use), perhaps also labor saving by
eliminating the need to manually layout the symbol with the technology in
use at the time (certainly a frustration today).

We may never know the reason why it was dropped by Addis Zemen.  With
digital screens and automated layout by software (following well defined
rules that ELReq develops), I hope we may yet see a little revival in its
utilization.


Related, a post that I became too busy to make previously, was to share an
experiment in 3 justifications of Ethiopic Wordspace (ragged right, full
with wordspace centered, and full with word-bounded style). This was
prepared for an author that I was working with to help him decide on a
style to use -ultimately he preferred the ragged right.  Rather than attach
the file of samples to this post, a link to is here:

  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9HehOOosU24V3JUeTRNTC1yVVU

regards,

-Daniel