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From: Achim G. <ac...@as...> - 2006-05-03 07:15:25
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Hi all, I was observing the graphite list for a while now... Today I want to get active myself. I have a couple important questions about graphite and hope you are patient enough to read my initial explanation and questinos. I would appreciate as much input I can get on this. On a trip down to Guangxi Province in China I met up with a group of different scholars working on the traditional Zhuang square character script. The characters look almost like Chinese. They are written with the same radicals / particles but they are completely different. One group supported by the local government wants to document all characters in various ancient texts. They estimated about 50.000 different characters. A different group of Chinese scholars want to write their research publications in square characters. They want a system on a CD that installs on a PC and enables them to write. There are other teams including SIL, which are doing research on various dialects in this area. I am related to this projects. As you can see there are different interests with one in common: All want to write square characters in (dictionaries, research papers, etc.) First question: Is Graphite capable to produce a 50.000 character font? Do we run into limits in UNICODE? How can we overcome this? Do we have to create our own code page? How workable might it be to create a normalized font with the most common 10.000 square characters? Second question: In my understanding open office is getting ready for graphite. With keyman I can make an input method. Are there already examples where graphite is used in a lager not highly educated community. Third question: Can we create out of the graphite smart font an ordinary ttf font with the various constructed glyphs to use it in word processors on Mac OS, Linux and Windows? Here are some key ideas we had: Create a client server application which allows collecting linguistic information and making statistics. a) Client server --> many people should be able to contribute (editor and revisors) b) Client software should allow to construct square characters to produce the GDL file c) Different filters should allow various outputs according to the needs. ==> how much effort would it take to make a client interfacing with the graphite engine / compiler / batch jobs enabling the user to see the changes he makes on the fly. ==> which programming language would be best to do this? ==> is there something similar around we can use as a start? Again I and all our team members would appreciate your input into this! Greetings - Achim Achim W. Gerber JHF - IT Manager Jian Hua Foundation Ltd. Apt 502, Gate 5, An Da Gong Yu, Bin Shui Dao, Tiyuanbei, Hexi District, Tianjin 300060, China Tel: +86 22 2307 3926 Fax: +86 22 2307 3926 Mobile: +86 137 5275 4929 Website: www.jhf-hk.org Jian Hua's purpose is to build China through cooperation in education, development, medical and social services, serving her peoples with compassion, integrity & expertise. |