Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dalke 5912 days ago
Really? One problem was the lack of diverse fonts with an ə in it. How does free software solve that? Another was the different programs used different ways to input the ə character. Free software doesn't help there - why would they all use the same entry sequence? A third was that no keyboard supported that common character in the home row. While key remappers exist, what should the new standard layout be?

Had they chosen æ instead then they could have just used Latin-1 and the large number of existing fonts, keyboards, etc. for languages like Danish which already solved the problem.
2 comments
dalke 5912 days ago
(When I wrote "solve" I meant "easily solve." Obviously you can use free software to write new fonts. The author clearly stated that a limiting factor was the lack of experience in how to design new fonts, pointing out that the font they developed was meant for 12pt and didn't scale correctly.)
link
wendroid 5911 days ago
Bitmap fonts are easy. I made a truetype font in the 1990s using CorelDraw so I know that's not hard. Keyboard maps, again trivial. And don't discount the power of a felt tip when it comes to marking a keyboard.
link
dalke 5911 days ago
The article goes into well-written details of why what you suggested here was tried and didn't work. 1) they also wanted print fonts, 2) they made a bitmap font but it didn't scale right, 3) people want a large variety of font forms, which they couldn't provide. 4) At the OS level, what do you map your key to, if the character code doesn't exist? 5) Applications chose different, incompatible key-bindings, and 6) for the entire country?

There's also a difference between making a font and making a good, generally usable font, just like I as a 7th grader could program, but they weren't good, generally usable programs.

link