Brahmic Scripts

[jonorthwash]

Hi everyone,

I haven't gone through this thread in detail, but I see that a lot has been figured out and done I had a few basic comments / points for further discussion:

First of all, as it seems you guys are aware of, Tokharian has yet to be implemented in unicode. There were some early proposals for a unified encoding for all Brahmic scripts, but they ended up not going with it. Now they're considering whether to combine certain as-of-yet unencoded scripts into one proposal, including Khotanese and Tokharian. I tried contacting the people at SEI (http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/) to get more information or join in on the conversation, but haven't heard back yet. It may be time for me to try to poke them. In any case, the next big step in this direction is a formal proposal to Unicode, but I'm sure there are many little steps that have to be taken before that can happen.

Also, I'm curious whether your plan is to open the font up to community development. Or more generally, do you plan to "open-source" the font? This doesn't exclude the possibility of the primary copyright holder making some money off of it, but I would advocate for making it free not just as in speech, but as in beer as well. A version control utility like git would be a great way for development to be more community-oriented. And as prof. Beckwith said, it would be great to have something to use—and I would add—whether or not it's perfect or complete. Showing off images of the font in use is great (it's beautiful, btw!), but the ultimate test is for people to use a known incomplete version, find problems, and fix it themselves.

Also, clawgrip, I just saw that you plan to put the project on hold. What better opportunity to post what you have somewhere for other people to pick up / work on? I found two people online who had posted to their blogs that they'd started work on a Tokharian font. I contacted them both several months ago, and they had both abandoned their projects (and basically thrown away their progress) for similar reasons to what you say. It would be a shame for yet another person out there to have to reinvent the wheel just because you didn't feel you were done (whatever that means for a font—people and corporations are constantly updating even common ones). Anyway, if you're potentially interested the possibility of releasing what you have so far, let's talk.

Lastly, I'd love to join the discussion of the various issues involved in making the font work. If someone were to summarise a few of the outstanding issues from previous conversations, it would help a lot. That said, I'm not sure the generalisations that were made about letters being connected were entirely right. There are cases of extra ink marks between characters as the "pen" was moved, but I think only the ‹lä› comes close to being standardly connected to the previous character. As prof. Beckwith mentioned, there are some good sources on the script. I could definitely help you with access to the information from the sources.

I also have a little bit of background in font design, and quite a bit of background editing vectors and the like, and would be happy to help from this angle as well. I'm very happy to see that someone's been working on this, and I hope I can help contribute to the effort in some way!

[clawgrip]

Trying out a cursive version of Khotanese. A lot of the surviving Khotanese manuscripts are written in cursive form. There is significant variation between different scribes, but overall there are general characteristics they follow, some of which differ slightly from the standard form. What I am designing is somewhat similar to the full presentation form and is not the most extreme form of cursive. It's really hard to find some signs that I need, so I may have to just guess for some of them. Here is what I have so far:



Edit: Extra details:
You can see that the cursive form has abandoned most of the independent vowel signs (top two rows) and just uses the /a/ vowel letter with vowel diacritics added on.

The shape of <ma> (7th row, last letter) is clearly different from the presentation form. This is a form that is similar to Tocharian <ma>.

I only have a single manuscript as a source for cursive <ṅa> (last letter on the third row). I'm not sure why it looks so different. I'm a little unsure on the exact shape of the presentation form as well.

That manuscript is also my only source so far for a couple other letters as well (jha, ṭa, ṭha, ḍha)

[2+3 clusivity]

ERMMGGERRDDdddd!!!!! Thanks for the update.

For Khotanese, have you run across a grammar while finding symbols?

[clawgrip]

I've found little bits of grammar here and there, but nothing comprehensive, unfortunately. But I imagine you could find some stuff if you search a bit.

I'm considering putting together a Unicode proposal for Tocharian, since no one else has done it yet. It's labelled "Turkestani" in the Unicode Roadmap, but I don't like this, because I consider Khotanese to be a separate script, and the word "Turkestani" is too general because it covers both.

I've made a preliminary table for the proposal based on the blocks reserved for "Turkestani". You can see the chart here.

I'm having trouble developing an OpenType font and I think it's because the character range is not recognized by Unicode yet, so most programs don't know what to do with it. Or maybe I'm just doing my font wrong.

[clawgrip]

I have written and submitted to the Unicode Consortium a comprehensive preliminary proposal to encode a unified Turkestani script (including Tocharian and Khotanese). It should be reviewed at the upcoming Unicode meeting on August 5-8. Turkestani is already on the Roadmap to the SMP, so I guess there is a relatively good chance of this eventually working out. My proposal makes it clear that unification is not necessarily a good option. I am personally hoping they will elected to separate Khotanese from Tocharian, which seems like the best option anyway, since they are quite different.

Looking forward to finding out how this turns out, because I've never done anything like this before.

[clawgrip]

I'm told the Unicode meeting has been very busy and they may or may not be able to get to my proposal this time. I hope they do!

In the mean time I started working on a font of another ancient and obscure script: the Ikshvaku form of Satavahana script (not Turkestani at all, but where else am I going to post this?):


Samples of this script are really hard to come by though, so I probably won't be able to make a Unicode proposal for it, even though it's on the Roadmap to the SMP.

[clawgrip]

I've decided to turn this thread into a general Brahmic scripts thread. I've been working on assembling a family tree of the entire Brahmic family, which is no small task. I want to compare all the scripts, as well.

I have been working on a comparison of consonants for some time now (WIP available here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3)

A more concise family tree I'm working on can be seen here. This is more revised and up to date than the previous images.

Can anyone see any mistakes or additions for this? Please contribute if you can!

[masako]

I have been working on a comparison of consonants for some time now (WIP available here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3) A more concise family tree I'm working on can be seen here. This is more revised and up to date than the previous images.

This...this is why I love you.

Can anyone see any mistakes or additions for this? Please contribute if you can!

I've saved all of the images and I will drool look over things this weekend (hopefully), as soon as I'm done, I'll give you some feedback.

[clawgrip]

Thanks. Keep in mind that the earlier images are kind of out of date!

[jward]

Dear clawgrip,

What a pleasure to discover your Tocharian and Khotanese font images! You are doing some fine and beautiful work.

I hope you continue to be inspired, energized and encouraged in this project. To the best of my knowledge, you have taken this further than any other human being, and you are well on the way to significantly smoothing the path of learning for future students.

Congratulations, and may it always be fun, too.

With all the best,

James Ward
Santa Ana, CA

[clawgrip]

Thanks for the comments. I intend now to submit two separate proposals for Tocharian (Turkestani) and Kohtanese. The Tocharian one can work mainly as a modified version of the current proposal, but I'll need to make a Khotanese one from scratch.

[2+3 clusivity]

Hey Clawgrip, do you remember what thread this was split off of? I am trying to find some links I left in the original.

EDIT: NM, I found it.

[clawgrip]

I have written and submitted separate proposals for Tocharian and Khotanese to replace my previous proposal (available here) which proposed their encoding as a unified as Turkestani script. They didn't get around to reviewing my proposal at either of the last two meetings, but informal feedback I received suggested that there could be positive response to submitting them as separate scripts. From what I am told, it seems likely they will discuss it at the next meeting.

[2+3 clusivity]

Claw, have you seen this:

http://idp.bl.uk/conference/papers/IDP_S4002_SB.pdf

[masako]

Claw, have you seen this:

http://idp.bl.uk/conference/papers/IDP_S4002_SB.pdf

This makes me very happy. Thank you 2+3.

[clawgrip]

I haven't seen that document before, but there's some interesting stuff in it. The International Dunhuang Project has been invaluable to me...it's an amazing website.

My proposals were discussed at the last meeting (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15017.htm) and I received some feedback. I will be updating my proposals and having them reviewed by some experts (whom I do not know).

[dhok]

Any update on the Tocharian font, even if just one that replaces existing codepoints? A small side project of mine is designing and producing a flag (or perhaps bumper sticker, or hat) with the slogan MAKE TOCHARIA GREAT AGAIN.

[hwhatting]

MAKE TOCHARIA GREAT AGAIN.

Tocharia A or Tocharia B? (And I would buy that.)

[Raholeun]

MAKE TOCHARIA GREAT AGAIN.

(And I would buy that.)

I can already see myself smuggly sipping coffee from my MTGA mug.