Fonts, In General

- - I'm no professional, but I do understand the fundamental difficulties in finding common grounds between different standards and communicative means were language sets are concerned. Unicode is obviously both a nightmare in this situation as it is a godsend for the multinationals who are endorsing it. Scale isn't really the difficulty though, as some Asian languages have literally tens of thousands of glyphs. Having worked with it myself I can say without a doubt that the dissenting trend is to reduce the number of glyphs (numbering in the tens of thousands). Most of the monetary glyphs I omit.
- - I think a good case in point concerns the Latin set. There are two important families of 'glyphs', and two accompanying modes: the glyph and the combining glyph. Basically, all Latin-based character sets require the formation of the alphabet, which is twenty-six characters times two (cases). These are regular glyphs. But additional to these, in most languages, are the 'accents' which are placed, usually over, the character. To create a character with an accent, a combining glyph is created that combines the two glyphs, the character with the accent.
- - This is pretty simple. But the end result is conceivably a very expanded set of glyphs. I would hypothesize that thinking ahead in the case of something like a PDA or cell phone (falling under Unicode) where thrift is a necessity, the combining glyph would be better hardwired and save on the shear size of a font. Of coarse, this is a guess of architecture. But it's important to realize that digital structures that are truly efficient to the user (which must be defined according to the language set) must be based on ease of use and interactivity. Any such a hardwire combining glyph must have clear standards to function properly.
- - The Indymedia sites have been interesting in this regard, but the Internet as a whole is a great breeding ground for this too. Of coarse, it's not always as simple as using ASCII(Latin-based) to solve all computing problems. I'm always quick to point out that Microsoft and Apple both started over twenty years ago, secondarily, as basically digital typeface foundries. This is a requirement for eventual dominance in their area. They have opposing metrics and are typically Latin based. I point this out because of the tendency many developers have in rigidly limiting their standards. It makes getting the job done really easy, but it cuts out anyone who has a different standard.
- - So on a site with two different fonts, the obvious answer would be to run the site on an either/or structure. Either you provide information in the font in which it was provided or the site provide some sort of translation. The multifont solution is difficult because it requires additional work on the part of the site providers. The translation solution is rot with peril because a) automated translation is ineffective (this may change) and b) the process is time consuming, an important point on-line.
- - Personally, I think the approach of providing translations out right makes more sense. But this means that there must be a certain degree of concision. Otherwise, web-sites would be enormous to download for the user.
- - A dynamic use of all three approaches could also work.

- - Solutions are as plentiful as are languages and imagination. But my focus is always on the user. The developers of keyboard sets might know this (keyboard sets are not familiar to most Latin user, I'd say). Ideally, therefore, I try to achieve the impossible. Character sets based on a one-keyboard model. This reduces basically every font in size, but is the most universal in it's approach. This sort of simplification did result in an explosion in the creation of Latin font styles with the dawn of the internet.
- - Without seeming too over-imaginative, just imagine you are an alien from another world. You approach a computer, and what do you see? In the case of language, you would see the keyboard first, not the font. Now by interchanging with another keyboard (by which I mean another character set), of coarse one can expand the language set into the character set. But as people begin to see the whole approach as universal, I think it's important to note that it will become an instrumental device for human communication.
- - I'm not writing that all languages be reduced to one keyboard set, that's ridiculous. But this reduction is the way to begin basic communication.
- - Another solution is found when the alien realizes that although it is a 'human' computer, the computer is not human. Thus I suggest too that what is truly universal to us all are the common glyphs. And those are not the language (human) but the technical (computer) glyphs.

Multifont:
 http://indymedia.org.il/
Translation:
 http://germany.indymedia.org/
Bilingual:
 http://chiapas.indymedia.org/