Thanks for the link to Graphite (SIL), now I know what the generic term Graphite in the previous thread meant. That stub was interesting to read but I could never have found it as in my mental domain the word “graphite” was not linked to an alternative software programming language for font development.
I agree with your comment that a user friendly way should not involve the user is such choices. However, from what I have been able to assess by reading some literature on OT font development by Adobe, and having bought Pageplus X6 over the last two days, to specifically assess OTF as Word 2010 is so primitive, I can conclude that a perfect solution is not available even with OTF as the rules for “advanced” cursive writing are too many; above all because most of them are dictated by personal choices at the time of writing by the user. It is for this reason that I thought a look up table therefore, such as the existing technology of the Atok bar or even the MS IME pad, might be adequate if it could be adapted to a Latin character set. Though I do agree that the frequency of the pair of letters o, r,v, and w is so often that this dialog box will be popping up so often to perhaps becoming annoying for the user.
Thanks for the discussion. I will now consider the matter resolved and closed.
I have some comments on the Autokerning features of FC. In which thread should I address those?
Well, I know only a little about oriental orthography. I know some things about computer input, but not all. I knew nothing about the use of an Input Method Editor for entering oriental characters and have learned from this thread.
Also, I do not remember having previously known the phrase “Spencerian loops” and so I looked it up and learned much about handwriting style.
I am simply participating in this thread, answering questions when I am able to do so, learning some things that I did not know before and interested in trying to develop a solution where none exists at the present time.
I do not know if such a product exists. I feel that it would be a very useful product to have available if it were usable with many application programs. What I mean is a system that sits between the keyboard and the application program so that, say, it would be usable with both Microsoft WordPad and Serif PagePlus without either of those programs themselves being modified. That could perhaps be done by having the new program substitute some sequences with Private Use Area characters automatically and having some characters substitutable by a Private Use Area character as a user choice: the rules for substitution being in a text file, so the rules could be changed by an end user fairly easily if so desired.
My %%t idea may not be the best way to go, but it might possibly be the best that can be achieved without a major redesign of the operating system and the font system.
I have done some programming some years ago, including FORTRAN, Pascal, C, Visual Basic but I have no idea as to how one gets a program to sit between the keyboard input and an application program in a Windows system.
However, it may be that the discussion in this thread may lead to a solution becoming produced.
William,
The IME pad works transparently and does not affect any word processor program you may use, in principle. Generally it is optimised to work with MS Word and the Atok system IME pad with both Word and their own Word Process program made by Just Systems, a Japanese company that specializes in this field for the Japan market. The program works as an interactive layer and detects what the user has pressed on the keyboard. Then transliterates, not translates, those entries entered in Romaji (i.e. using the Roman alphabet) into the corresponding character symbol of their language. This is what is done with Japanese. Most other Asian languages such as Hindi or even Arabic have to resort to some similar form as their character set is so much bigger than our Roman set. Interestingly, despite much effort to use native language inputs on computers, de facto, the Roman alphabet is the preferred method. For example in Japan all laptops have a dedicated Japanese keyboard entry input limited to the Hiragana characters syllabary which can be converted to Katakana at the press of a function key, F7, if my memory does not fail me. Yet, most users don’t bother with that native entry and prefer to use the Romaji entry. In fact I was in japan just at the time of the launch of the new macBook retina and I was considering buying it as the presence of the Japanese Hiragana symbols on the keys can be totally ignored and just use the Qwerty symbols. Of course these IME pads provide other added facilities for character recognition, essential with Chinese and Japanese ideograms, such as dictionaries, spellers etc., but for a character based latin text these would not be necessary as they are already provided by the main application such as Word or Pageplus, etc.
Now that you have seen more into the cursive script, which we call it copperplate here in the UK, inclusive of the fancy Spencerian loops, you will realise that the choice of which one to use is largely a gut feeling approach decided at the time the user is writing or typing. That is why I think canonical rules are probably not the best solution and I favour a popup dialogue box, not very intrusive, that just flashes up the alternative characters to choose from. Incidentally, if you have not realised this yet, this kind of copperplate script requires a large numbe rof kerning pairs. In my font I have reached 2440 pairs and I still have to include the diacritic vowels.
I am contacting the company Just Systems in Japan to ask them if they are interested in adapting their IME for my cursive script and offer it to them as collateral so to speak. I am resolved to see this job being done by someone and probably the commercial interest might be a deciding factor.
All the best.