On latin font for tokipona

Signs and symbols: Writing systems (hieroglyphs, nail writing) and Signed Toki Pona; unofficial scripts too
Signoj kaj simboloj: Skribsistemoj (hieroglifoj, ungoskribado) kaj la Tokipona Signolingvo; ankaŭ por neoficialaj skribsistemoj
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janKalepa
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Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2013 2:53 am

On latin font for tokipona

Post by janKalepa »

This is not about new writing system, I thinking about creating a latin font, which will suite best for toki pona. Sorry for my English also.

As I can see, toki pona texts looks better (more readable) when serif font is used. That's because of words like 'lili', 'li', and lack of g's and d's and so.
So, my first idea was just use serif font with good distinction between characters for my toki pona. But lack of 'heads' and 'tails' still impacts readability,
Probably, toki pona needs other latin font, drawn with toki pona in mind.

And then some other thoughts came to my head.

First, the history. As we know, historically , latin script makes no distinction between capital and small letters at all. There was inscription made with all capitals, and with all small on the other hand. There was two types of scripts, not connected at all for a long time. Than capitals was used as chapter marker, and only in later time - to emphasise first letter of a sentence (alone with a dot before).

(the first practical conclusion: in tori pona font we have to enlarge or otherwise emphasise dot, because unlike the other languages, it's one and only phrase divider. In big toki pona text it's hard to find where the sentence ends)

What is a capital letters in toki pona? They just mark unofficial words. It reminds me ancient Egyptian cartouches around names, not something from European tradition. If the toki pona was the language with long history, we would say: "Tokiponians mark names and foreign words, starting them with special, altered letters".

(this means, that capitals must look different, but not like in latin font. To keep readability, why not make them... well, altered another way? Maybe, to compensate lack of "tails" in toki pona ABC, make them look like small ones, but with some element above or below?)

And one historical invention is really good for toki pona – ligatures. All languages have barely readable "ff", "fi" and so, and toki pona too. These are mentioned above 'lili', and others.

(with such a small number of root words and syllables it's posible to make ligatures for almost all cases. For example, make all 'li', 'pi' and 'la' bold)

Any suggestions? Ideas?
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janAetherStar
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Re: On latin font for tokipona

Post by janAetherStar »

Well, on making the start of sentences more recognizable, maybe you could just make the whole first word underlined? Maybe even 'la' to show the two 'side' of 'la' better. Like this:

mi wile e ni: sina pilin pona. sina pona ala pona? sina pilin pona ala la mi pilin ike.

The main problem is that it's a bit of a hassle to put in all the (u)(/u) stuff.
ale li pona. :)
sina o sona e ni.
janKipo
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: On latin font for tokipona

Post by janKipo »

Yes, the easiest solution to the sentence demarcation problem seems to be to use / for the ending -- visible, needs not extra keys. Could be confused with ? and !, I suppose, but tp doesn't use the latter and doesn't strictly need the former or does so only very rarely (questions without question structures). For the rest, any clear type should do.
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janKalepa
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Re: On latin font for tokipona

Post by janKalepa »

If we create the font – it's possible to use bigger dots with wider whitespace after it.
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