Q for Zomp: Verdurian font

[BGMan]

I was wondering, is there a newer Verdurian font? With the one up on the board, one cannot type sentences with diacritics in them and switch the font to "Verdurian" and get the correct thing... one CAN do that but just so long as you don't use characters with diacritics. But if you do need a diacritic character, you need to go through the character map and fish out the Verdurian character that has the right diacritic if you want to type, say, ë or á... and oftentimes I'm not sure if I have the right one and need to double-check.

I suspect there are a few others that would like a Verdurian font too. If a better one came out, I (we?) would appreciate it!

[zompist]

It sounds like you're asking for a WinWord-friendly font. Unfortunately, I don't write Almean documents in Windows. It works great on the Mac.

(I also don't have any font editing software on Windows... and barely on the Mac; the one I have doesn't work on my current Mac.)

I certainly wouldn't have any objection if someone took the Verdurian TrueType font and reshuffled it for Windows (so long, of course, as they didn't claim copyright for it).

[Neek]

I only have that problem when I'm using GIMP as my imaging software. I think GIMP shuffles the character sets by names, not by hex addresses. There's no reason why Alt+228 yields the letter eř in a regular wordprocessor using the font, but a+lenge in GIMP (which is associated with its transliteration).

It might help if GIMP would accept unicode input...

[bi]

My version of GIMP does do Unicode, in fact. It even properly handles Hebrew right-to-left writing and diacritics.

Also, the way Unicode works is that you're not supposed to write ë (U+00EB) and switch to a Verdurian font and expect a Verdurian character to come out. Under Unicode, U+00EB is always the Latin small letter e with umlaut, and the corresponding Verdurian glyph will need its own code.

[Neek]

I'll have to test GIMP when I get back home. It it works, then I'm more retarded than I thought.

[bi]

zompist's fonts don't use the above Unicode mapping though. I had some success remapping characters using FontForge on Linux to their Unicode code points, but for some reason the characters refuse to show up under GIMP. They work properly with Mozilla however.

Here's the font I got from verdurian.ttf after remapping the Verdurian digits and a few other characters. If it works, the following should display the numeral 123,657 just like on the zompist.com front page:


(What I basically did:
- Encoding | Compact
- right-click on each glyph, change its Unicode value appropriately, then Set from Value
- Encoding | Reencode | ISO 10646-1 (Unicode, Full)
- File | Generate Fonts | TrueType | Save
But since the font doesn't work under GIMP, this procedure may well be bogus. Caveat haxor.)

[valinta]

On a related note, I still can't get Mac OS X to make sense of the Almean fonts (besides Maraille).

[bi]

OK, here's the font I rearranged from verdurian.ttf which follows zompist's Unicode proposal for Verdurian. For the glyphs not mentioned in the proposal, I've mapped some of them to the standard codes (e.g. U+0020 for space), and the rest I've not touched.

Also, the font works under GIMP now. (It seems xfs was caching font data, and thus GIMP was seeing erroneous information about the font's character mappings even though I changed them later.)

Quick test:
 

[Serali]

Quick test:

 

What script is this? I looooooooooooove it to death! Could you post the alphabet and the font for it? Thanks!

[Klaivas]

@Serali: I can't see it, because I can't work out how to download the font, but... isn't it Verdurian?

[Serali]

No. It looks like a conscript one of my friends made. But I can't really describe it. It's very pretty though. I wish Bi would answer my question. I asked her several times already about the script but she never answered my question.

[Klaivas]

Are you sure? I mean, it does say verdurian.ttf

[valinta]

Here's the font I got from verdurian.ttf after remapping the Verdurian digits and a few other characters. If it works, the following should display the numeral 123,657 just like on the zompist.com front page:

Thanks! Unfortunately, I get this message when I go to the page: "All download slots assigned to your country (United States) are in use. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later." I can mirror it somewhere once I get it, in case others have this problem.

[Serali]

Are you sure? I mean, it does say verdurian.ttf

Yes. I know it does say that but under the words 'Quick Test' is a completely different script that I would like to know more about. Bi please please tell what the script is please!

[Delthayre]

It is entirely possible, Serali, that your overenthusiastic nagging is deterring him from answering.

In any case, I don't think its another constructed script.

The symbols that appear, at least to me, under, "quick test," are some variation of the Cree Syllabary. My guess is that since I don't have the Verdurian font installed, that the browser used some other font that I had to try to fill in the unknown characters. It doesn't make sense that Bi would put some random, unassociated constructed script in a post and thread discussing Verdurian.


(Now, an hour later, for some reason, the characters under "quick test" appear as block boxes with the ligature Æ in them)

[valinta]

I finally got the file, but I'm having the same problems I had with the old font: Mac OS 10.4.8 recognizes it as a font file and lets me install it, but all the characters show up blank in Font Book.

[Shinali Sishi]

can you upload the reworked one elsewhere? the link goes nowhere for me

[Serali]

It is entirely possible, Serali, that your overenthusiastic nagging is deterring him from answering.

No it's not. Because I asked Bi months ago about it and Bi
never answered my question. So I gave up for a while and then decided to ask him again. And sure enough no answer. And what I'm seeing looks nothing like cree. Although there is one cree symbol the rest is something else. Plus when I right clicked it I found out it was an image.

But when I quoted it I saw the script exactly as it was posted in the message box. So Bi sorry I was annoying. But could you please tell me what the script is? And show me the alphabet please?

[A pocketful of songs.]

Serali, could you take a screenshot and let us see what you're seeing?

[Serali]

I could but how do you do that? And if it envolves a scanner it may have be a while since mine for some reason isn't working. What I could do it to try and draw some of it on MS paint and see what I come up with. *Goes to try it out*

[Rui]

Locate the button called "Prnt Scrn" and press it. (Or, if you have a computer like mine, Fn+Prnt Scrn), and then open some sort of Paint or Word program. And then Ctrl+V.

Save it, and post it.

The end.

[Delthayre]

I was able to download the font and it seems to work. This includes that the things under Bi's, "quick test," displays as Verdurian, which leads me to think that I was right when I told Serali that what was displayed there wasn't a conscript, but something that her browser was putting up in place of characters that it didn't have the font for.

Edit, some times later: Now it's displaying as a mixture of Verdurian and Cree syllabary for me and I while I can insert Verdurian characters in MSword, if I try to type with them, it switches to Times New Roman; a consequence, I guess, of the limitations of the method that Bi tried.

[Serali]

Ok Now I understand now. But why are characters there for then if they're not apart of a language? And is there a map with their Unicode equivalents?

[butsuri]

Guys, what bi posted is a string of characters in the Unicode Private Use Area. They're mapped unofficially to Verdurian in the CSUR, but unless you have a font that follows that mapping (i.e. bi's font, since there aren't any others that I know of) you won't see Verdurian. You could see almost anything - whatever some font on your system has assigned to those codepoints. Generally glyphs that the font creator thinks would be useful but that aren't (yet) officially Unicode characters. Even if you do have bi's font, unless you're using an app you've specifically told to use it, it's only a matter of chance whether you'll see Verdurian - none of your software knows it's supposed to be. That's why Delthayre is getting it jumbled up with some syllabics font.

So I've no idea what you're seeing, Serali, but it's coming from a font on your system.

[Serali]

I guess it is. Hey can I ask you a question? What the beautiful script in you sig called? And could you show me more of it? Thanks!