Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/360b.lha/SlavicFonts/slavic.doc

Text File | 1990-02-23 | 9.8 KB | 215 lines

Slavic volume, version 1.0    - by Robin LaPasha
--------------------------
 Font conversion -
    Prof. M.J. Connolly and David V. Moffat contributed Mac fonts.

    I used the Mac Font Converter by Rico Mariani and John O'Neill,
    available on Fish 138.

    Richard Sexton sent me some fonts used for the Latin half of the
    bilingual fonts.

I did quite a bit of tweaking, combining, kerning, and adding
new sizes.

To see the fonts immediately, use a view or show program
to look at example1.pic and example2.pic.

1.  I remapped some of the fonts to different ASCII values.
    Font Directories:
    bilingual -
        ISOLC fonts are mapped to the "approved" ISO standard for
        combined "Latin/Cyrillic" use.  It's not bad for designing
        sorting techniques (almost alphabetical for each
        language/half,) but there's not a proper accent mark.
        ISOLCserif - 15 pt.
        ISOLCsans - 11, 13, 15 pt.
        KOI8 fonts are mapped to (one of) the common Soviet standards.
        Mostly it's useful if you're on the Listening Comprehension
        Exercise Network for Russian language exercises.
        KOI8serif - 15 pt.
        KOI8sans - 11, 13, 15 pt.
    cyrillic -
        Lower 128 - are mapped to directly follow the AATSEEL
        phonetic/student keyboard layout standards.  (i.e. A(65) = A,
        B = Be, but C = TSe, then D = D etc.)
        Full Slavic character set fonts:
        Novgorod - 13, 25 pt.   A sans serif font.
        Suzdal - 16, 32 pt.  A thick sans serif font; classy.
            The upper 128 ASCII values for Suzdal and Novgorod are
        mapped to EITHER the best phonetic approximation OR where
        I could find space!  I believe that all modern Slavic
        Cyrillic characters and many Old Church Slavonic characters
        are represented.
        Modern Russian character set fonts:
            Kursk - 15, 28 pt.  A cursive font.
           Moskva - 11, 15, 22, 30 pt.  A sans serif font.
            Poltava    - 15, 30 pt.  A serif font.
            The upper 128 ASCII values for Kursk, Moskva, and
        Poltava are mapped to get accented vowels, plus a few
        other linguistic/grammatical symbols.
    latin -
        Latin - 12, 18, 24 pt.
            The upper 128 ASCII values for this font were put
        where I could find space.  (The characters diverged from
        the Latin ISO standard too much for that to be useful.)
        You can use this font for Latin-based Slavic languages
        (i.e. Croatian, Polish, Czech, etc.);  all "library"-type
        overstrikes and other odd symbols are available.
            The overstrikes are set for both lower and upper case.
        Example: you get "ch" by typing c, then alt-z; "CH" via C,
        then alt-Z. [That's c-hachek, or, like, "c" with a little
        bird over it...]  Notice that accents FOLLOW the letter.
    big.cyrillic -
        kirilica - 160 pt.
        klasantikva - 105 pt. (less than 128 chars.)
            Kirilica is based on an Old Church Slavonic manuscript,
        and klasantikva is short for "klassisticheska antikva"
        [i.e. classical antique...]  Both are cleaned and edited
        from digitized Bulgarian fonts (if you were wondering where
        certain other Cyrillic letters were in klasantikva, well,
        Bulgarian doesn't have some of them.)  Again, both are
        phonetically (or thereabouts) mapped; kirilica uses the
        upper 128. They could use some cleaning up (not all the
        same size; an artifact of the digitizing, I suppose,) but
        make sure to use a font editor that won't damage them.
        Anyway, they look pretty good in a paint program,
        printed at 25% of full size (on my printer.)

2.  Keymaps are a BIG part of this system.  Why?  They are nearly all
255 character (or so) fonts.  Now, I could have mapped the ASCII values
of Kursk, Moskva, and Poltava so that some of the upper values would be
available via the dead keys of regular keymaps.  However,

a.)  I still would not get stressed vowels "ja", "ju", or "eh" (reversed).
They're vowels too, but there aren't spaces on a regular keyboard mapping.
(Try hitting one of the dead keys, then "q" or "[", with usa1.  You can get
something with alt-q instead of dead-q, but nothing happens for either dead-[
or alt-[.)

b.)  I could not effectively use the rest of the fonts.
    1.) If you think about it, the dead keys in usa1 allow you five
    overstrikes on six vowels (i.e. if you type alt-f, then "a" you get
    an acute-accented "a" in usa1, but you can't get an acute-accented
    "z" that way.)  I prefer to be able to use overstrikes above any
    character, by typing an alt-something after the character.
    Kursk, Moskva, and Poltava have some built-in "overstricken" (?)
    characters by typing those characters together with the alt keys,
    but the other method is available.

    2.) I also need to put characters in places used by usa1's dead keys.
    Suzdal and Novgorod in particular have characters in the upper 128
    that map (most logically) to nearly all of the dead keys.

[I understand the keymap usa1 well enough to use it as an example; however,
I don't intend to exclude other international keymaps.]

So, I designed what amounts to a "generic" keymap.  [Kodiak Burns has
informed me that I've re-invented usa0, the old pre-SetMap keymap.]  If
you hit the "alt" key and another key at the same time, the ASCII value
obtained is the high-bit equivalent of the character key (you add 128 to
the character's ASCII value.)

The Cyrillic, big.cyrillic, and Latin fonts use this "generic" keymap,
and the ASCII values of the fonts are set accordingly.


The bilingual fonts, however, use their particular standards for "ASCII"
mapping of characters to a certain order within the font.  (Actually, it's
ISO and KOI mapping, as it turns out.)  So, I had to design keymaps to
get at the Cyrillic and the Latin letters.

I went whole hog, in a sense.  The keymap:
    KOI8 - gives you Latin "on bottom," Russian via alt-key characters.
    KOI8_russ - gives you Russian on bottom and Latin via alt-keys.
    [use these with the KOI8 fonts]
   (There's worse yet! - )
    ISO - gives you Latin on bottom and Russian via alt-keys.
    ISO_cyr - gives you Russian on bottom, characters of the other
        modern Slavic languages via alt-keys, and Latin on the
        unused alt-keys (and across the alt'ed numbers...)
    ISO_russ - gives you Russian on bottom, Latin via alt-keys, and
        other Slavic characters across the alt'ed numbers.
    [use these with the ISO fonts]

One big warning on these "flip-style" keymaps: do be careful if you're
popping in and out of CLI.  All of a sudden it can be hard to find the
right letters to type in "setmap" again!

I may try one other option in the future - some folks have set up
bilingual keymaps with the toggle set to the caps lock key.  English
is unshifted and alt'ed, while the Other language is caps-locked and
alt-shifted (or something like that.)  (Before KeyMapEd - mentioned
below - there were no keymap editors which could define capsable keys.)

All of the keymaps - and the fonts, in the case of those using the
"generic" keymap - use the phonetic/student keyboard layout rather
than the Soviet layout (i.e. based on a Soviet typewriter, or perhaps
computer.)  [I used to be able to touch-type on a Soviet typewriter,
but, it's not like there's a demand for it.  Besides, the Yugoslav
Cyrillic typewriter keyboard is phonetic-equivalent (mostly) to
American.  (I don't know how keyboards are in Europe otherwise.)]


I could have done things ONE other way - map the fonts' ASCII values
alphabetically in their original languages (i.e. Russian A(65) = A, B = B,
C = V, D = G) and work up a phonetic keymap for that.  But that would
still mean using a separate keymap.  In addition, deciding where to put the
non-Russian Cyrillic characters, plus the archaic characters, plus
the accented vowels, and overstrikes, in one or two "alphabetical"
ASCII-type layouts could be a nasty chore.


If you dare to be different -
    SetKey 2.0 by Charles Carter is what I used to make the keymaps.
    The version I used was later than the demo on Fish 70; besides
    being "real," he has released it to PD.  Other folks have reported
    problems or limitations using it with Amiga 500s or 2000s, though.
    I tried Edimap by Gilles Gamesh (now on Fish 182) and I'm eagerly
    awaiting a better chance to test KeyMapEd by Tim Friest
    (on Fish 193.)

    I edited these fonts in Calligrapher; you can try touching things
    up in Fed (on the Extras disk) but don't bother with the large
    fonts (if over 25 pt., they die nastily.)  Tim Robinson's
    FontEditor on Fish 30 worked the last time I tried it.


At least fonts and keymaps can - at least should - be interchangeable.
I've tried to arrange mine so that you can always get at the non-alted
keys, and you can switch keymaps for the high-bit goodies from an extra
CLI shell.  Well-behaved programs can handle this.  Naughty programs that
don't read the upper 128 values of keymaps properly (or fully) don't
deserve to be purchased - check that while trying out word processors.
(Although, as I mentioned in the font example picture, DPaintII did not
obey keymaps, apparently DPaint III does.  Progress continues...)

Do be careful when copying and using these; keep in mind the programs
FixFonts (for moving and copying fonts,) SetMap (for changing the
keymaps,) and Assign (for telling your programs where to look for
fonts; use it BEFORE running a program.)


Have fun with these.  I'd like to get connected with others working
on the Amiga with Slavic languages projects.  Send me your comments on
this collection, and any news of your use of it.  If you're building
a set of Slavic fonts differently, let's swap.  (If you're building
a set of Postscript Cyrillic fonts for use on the Amiga, I'll beg
publicly... and I might whimper for a really good TeX set.)

I know darn well that fonts aren't copyrightable stuff (keep in mind
that their NAMES are, though,) but I'd like:
    - to be known as the editor/author/collector of this set; and
    - to ask that the fonts remain together as a set WITH the
    keymaps and this file.

Thanks to all of the netters who have not only put up with my font
obsession, but have contributed programs and advice for building
these.

Robin LaPasha
3002 Burton Road
Durham NC 27704

[e-mail]