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From: Joseph Spicer <wurdbendur@...>
Date: 2006-05-12 06:56:16 #
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Re: New Photo Album

Toggle Shavian
On Apr 21, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Star Raven wrote:

> Thanks, Hugh.
>
> You know, I'm learning a lot as I write about why things are like they
> are. I believe that Read may have actually known what he was talking
> about when he did the things that we complain about, such as the /haha/
> /hung/ reversal, which flows naturaly with my writing, and as for the
> on, awe, ah distinction, as I write, they seem to fall into place.
> While writing Richard III's Act I scene 1 speech (Now is the winter of
> our discontent...), I did have the opportunity to write the word
> Murderer, which seemed logical to have the schwer twice at the end.
> This and other interesting lessons can be learned with a little time
> and a broad nibbed pen.

I found the same thing when I started taking notes and writing fiction
in Shavian. Reading Androcles also helped a lot, My spelling is much
more consistent now.

> Once my scanner is operational again, it will make this whole transfer
> thing much easier, though if I had my druthers, I would make paper
> somewhat different. Rather than have a full line to be skipped, which
> as you can see I did not, but I would have put a half line between each
> line so that the decenders of one line did not over lap the ascenders
> of the line below. For my writing, this is not so much a problem since
> the ascenders don't reach to the top of the line, and the decenders are
> relatively short.
>
> --Star, who naturally writes quite small and crampt

I had the same issue with my paper, so I actually made my own. I've
just uploaded a letter-sized version, which you can find here:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/33166576/
You can read more about it there. Click the "Download to Desktop"
button to get the PDF and print it. I'll try to produce an A4 version
as well, and maybe others if anybody uses anything else. If you can
spare the paper and ink, please try it out and let me know what you
think.
I haven't actually used it much since I already have so much lined
paper around. But if I could get cheap paper like that, I might just
use it all the time. In any case, the extra guide lines are good for
practice. I plan to include something like it in my Shavian manual when
I get to the writing exercises.

Regards,
Joseph Spicer
JOsaf spFsD

From: "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink11@...>
Date: 2006-05-12 15:57:26 #
Subject: Re: New Photo Album

Toggle Shavian
Hi Star
Glad to hear you are making more progress from the cursive side of
things.
I quie agree that it is best way to learn Shavian, is just to use it
in all
manner of things. It is very logical and consistent. And all in all
everything makes sense, in a way that the Roman Alphabet does not.
After all the Roman Alphabet just kind of evolved from the Greek or
Etruscan or some other language that no one speaks today.

Still it's a shame we don't have more of a teaching manual than those
few notes at the end of Androcles.

But what I really wanted to make a point about, was the problem of
the decenders from the deep letters clashing with the next lines
ascenders.
The Hebrew Alphabet has the same kind of problem with
Lamed, their letter Elle. Most Hebrew letters, would fit nicely in a
square box, but the Lamed juts above them, because of its high
ascender.
So what they do in Hebrew, which might work in Cursive Shavian,
is that they just bend the ascender over to the left side about half
way down its length, whenever there is a conflict with the Lamed and
the letter above it. It looks like it's been squashed.

Remember, Shavian was designed to make it easier to get a whole a
sentence on a single line, without writing small and cramped.
Unfortunately, this great benefit, is slightly offset by the slight
detriment of not being able to get quite so many lines on a page.
A positive trade-off, I would say, for a number of reasons.

Regards, Paul V.
from the winter of his discontent
_________________________attached________________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Spicer <wurdbendur@...>
wrote:
>
> On Apr 21, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Star Raven wrote:
> > You know, I'm learning a lot as I write about why things are like
> > they are.
> > I believe that Read may have actually known what he was talking
> > about when he did the things that we complain about, such as
> > the /haha/
> > /hung/ reversal, which flows naturaly with my writing, and as for
> > on, awe, ah distinction, as I write, they seem to fall into place.
> > While writing Richard III's Act I scene 1 speech (Now is the
> > winter of
> > our discontent...), I did have the opportunity to write the word
> > Murderer, which seemed logical to have the schwer twice
> > at the end.
> > This and other interesting lessons can be learned with a little
> > time and a broad nibbed pen.

<snip> ... though if I had my druthers, I would make paper
somewhat different. Rather than have a full line to be skipped,
which as you can see I did not, but I would have put a half line
between each line so that the decenders of one line did not over lap
the ascenders of the line below. For my writing, this is not so much
a problem since the ascenders don't reach to the top of the line, and
the decenders are relatively short.

From: Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@...>
Date: 2006-05-12 19:46:41 #
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Re: New Photo Album

Toggle Shavian
There is an alternative. I could attempt to alter my writing style. We
are used to roman which has a specific base line, so what if we had
either A. A base line for the letters above, a half line addition for
ascenders, or short, round letters that float in the middle? Basically,
we would be adapting the paper to our letters. My favorite at the
moment is to either write large or use (printed from computer) paper
with smaller lines so that in essence the short letters ARE floating in
the middle.

Well, if the writing can be changed, why not the paper?

--Star

--- paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink11@...> wrote:

> Hi Star
> Glad to hear you are making more progress from the cursive side of
> things.
> I quie agree that it is best way to learn Shavian, is just to use it
> in all
> manner of things. It is very logical and consistent. And all in all
> everything makes sense, in a way that the Roman Alphabet does not.
> After all the Roman Alphabet just kind of evolved from the Greek or
> Etruscan or some other language that no one speaks today.
>
> Still it's a shame we don't have more of a teaching manual than those
>
> few notes at the end of Androcles.
>
> But what I really wanted to make a point about, was the problem of
> the decenders from the deep letters clashing with the next lines
> ascenders.
> The Hebrew Alphabet has the same kind of problem with
> Lamed, their letter Elle. Most Hebrew letters, would fit nicely in a
> square box, but the Lamed juts above them, because of its high
> ascender.
> So what they do in Hebrew, which might work in Cursive Shavian,
> is that they just bend the ascender over to the left side about half
> way down its length, whenever there is a conflict with the Lamed and
> the letter above it. It looks like it's been squashed.
>
> Remember, Shavian was designed to make it easier to get a whole a
> sentence on a single line, without writing small and cramped.
> Unfortunately, this great benefit, is slightly offset by the slight
> detriment of not being able to get quite so many lines on a page.
> A positive trade-off, I would say, for a number of reasons.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
> from the winter of his discontent
> _________________________attached________________________________
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Spicer <wurdbendur@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Apr 21, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Star Raven wrote:
> > > You know, I'm learning a lot as I write about why things are like
>
> > > they are.
> > > I believe that Read may have actually known what he was talking
> > > about when he did the things that we complain about, such as
> > > the /haha/
> > > /hung/ reversal, which flows naturaly with my writing, and as for
>
> > > on, awe, ah distinction, as I write, they seem to fall into
> place.
> > > While writing Richard III's Act I scene 1 speech (Now is the
> > > winter of
> > > our discontent...), I did have the opportunity to write the word
> > > Murderer, which seemed logical to have the schwer twice
> > > at the end.
> > > This and other interesting lessons can be learned with a little
> > > time and a broad nibbed pen.
>
> <snip> ... though if I had my druthers, I would make paper
> somewhat different. Rather than have a full line to be skipped,
> which as you can see I did not, but I would have put a half line
> between each line so that the decenders of one line did not over lap
> the ascenders of the line below. For my writing, this is not so much
> a problem since the ascenders don't reach to the top of the line, and
>
> the decenders are relatively short.
>
>
>
>
>
>


=========
http://www.livejournal.com/users/wodentoad

An idle duck is the devil's playground.

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From: Ethan <ethanl@...>
Date: 2006-05-13 02:33:33 #
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Re: Text conversion and homonyms

Toggle Shavian
Ph.D. wrote:

>Ethan skribis:
>
>
>>What happened to the original fonts? I know this has
>>been discussed before, I was wondering if I missed
>>something. Last I heard it wasn't known what happened
>>to them.
>>
>>
>
>
>"Androcles" was printed from metal type. The type was
>set using the Monotype system. The matrices for the
>type were specially engraved, probably by the Monotype
>Corporation (in England), which sometimes made
>special fonts like that. (Regular fonts would have been
>punched.)
>
>When Stephen Austin went out of business, the matrices
>were donated to the Type Museum in London.
>
>--Ph. D.
>
>
I see. So the type exists, but is inaccessible. Nevertheless, it can
be copied from the book, right? I assume nobody is retaining rights to
the fonts?

--
Ethan

Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to fly like a bird? Wonder no longer! http://www.maximumride.com/home.php

From: "Lionel Ghoti" <Lionel.Ghoti@...>
Date: 2006-05-14 18:58:13 #
Subject: phpGhotiFilleter, anyone?

Toggle Shavian
phpGhotiFilleter:

http://www.saytheword.org.uk/shavian/phpghotifilleter/index.php

- A PHP application which allows you to transliterate texts from the
Roman alphabet to the Shavian alphabet, through your web browser.

It stores a table of Roman-Shavian word pairs in a MySQL database. If
you ask it to transliterate a Roman word which it does not know, it
asks you how to write it in Shavian, and then that word pair is stored
in the database. It takes into account homographs, i.e. identical
Roman spellings which have different meanings and sounds (e.g. desert
(verb) and desert (noun)). If it comes across a Roman word for which
it has more than one Shavian spelling, it presents you with a
drop-down box containing all of the available options so that you can
select the correct one.

I'm out of touch with the Shavian community, so there might already be
something like this out there. I made phpGhotiFilleter as a way of
learning how to use PHP with MySQL. I think it works quite well, but
I've only just got it working, so there are likely to be some
unrevealed bugs. I'd be very grateful if you could play around with it
and let me know if it works for you, what's wrong with it, what could
be improved, etc.

There are very few word pairs in the database at the moment, so
transliteration is a fairly laborious process because it requires lots
of user input. That will obviously get better as entries are added to
the database.

Looking forward to reading your comments,

Lionel Ghoti

From: "Lionel Ghoti" <Lionel.Ghoti@...>
Date: 2006-05-14 23:27:33 #
Subject: Re: phpGhotiFilleter, anyone?

Toggle Shavian
By the way, my Shavian style sheet is probably not up to date. If the
filleter renders its Shavian text in Roman on your browser, because it
doesn't account for your favourite Shavian font, let me know the font
name and I'll add it to the style sheet.

LG

PS: Just been looking at the webstats. Hello Utah!

From: Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@...>
Date: 2006-05-15 01:42:21 #
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] phpGhotiFilleter, anyone?

Toggle Shavian
Bongo-coolies, and a couple of gold biscuits. This is just the sort of
thing that we need! I'll give it a shot and see what I come up with,
much thanks and nice to see you again!

--Star

--- Lionel Ghoti <Lionel.Ghoti@...> wrote:

> phpGhotiFilleter:
>
> http://www.saytheword.org.uk/shavian/phpghotifilleter/index.php
>
> - A PHP application which allows you to transliterate texts from the
> Roman alphabet to the Shavian alphabet, through your web browser.
>
> It stores a table of Roman-Shavian word pairs in a MySQL database. If
> you ask it to transliterate a Roman word which it does not know, it
> asks you how to write it in Shavian, and then that word pair is
> stored
> in the database. It takes into account homographs, i.e. identical
> Roman spellings which have different meanings and sounds (e.g. desert
> (verb) and desert (noun)). If it comes across a Roman word for which
> it has more than one Shavian spelling, it presents you with a
> drop-down box containing all of the available options so that you can
> select the correct one.
>
> I'm out of touch with the Shavian community, so there might already
> be
> something like this out there. I made phpGhotiFilleter as a way of
> learning how to use PHP with MySQL. I think it works quite well, but
> I've only just got it working, so there are likely to be some
> unrevealed bugs. I'd be very grateful if you could play around with
> it
> and let me know if it works for you, what's wrong with it, what could
> be improved, etc.
>
> There are very few word pairs in the database at the moment, so
> transliteration is a fairly laborious process because it requires
> lots
> of user input. That will obviously get better as entries are added to
> the database.
>
> Looking forward to reading your comments,
>
> Lionel Ghoti
>
>
>
>
>


=========
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An idle duck is the devil's playground.

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From: "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...>
Date: 2006-05-15 05:42:23 #
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] phpGhotiFilleter, anyone?

Toggle Shavian
On 5/14/06, Lionel Ghoti <Lionel.Ghoti@...> wrote:
> It stores a table of Roman-Shavian word pairs in a MySQL database. If
> you ask it to transliterate a Roman word which it does not know, it
> asks you how to write it in Shavian, and then that word pair is stored
> in the database.

Excellent!

> It takes into account homographs, i.e. identical
> Roman spellings which have different meanings and sounds (e.g. desert
> (verb) and desert (noun)). If it comes across a Roman word for which
> it has more than one Shavian spelling, it presents you with a
> drop-down box containing all of the available options so that you can
> select the correct one.

Even better!

> I'm out of touch with the Shavian community, so there might already be
> something like this out there.

There had been some discussion recently of making such an automatic
(or semi-automatic) text converter, but I don't remember whether
anyone had produced anything working yet.

Cheers,
Philip

P.S. Good to hear from you again!
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>

From: "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink11@...>
Date: 2006-05-15 07:38:27 #
Subject: Re: New Photo Album

Toggle Shavian
Hi Star
I don't like to make the Shaw Short letters too small.
The simple vowel signs get hard to distinguish, especially
if you are prone to dyslexia already.

As far as the ideal page for Shaw writing. Something a little
longer and maybe a bit narrower.
Steno-pads work well for me
Regards, Paul V.
_______________attached________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Star Raven
<celestraof12worlds@...> wrote:
>
> There is an alternative. I could attempt to alter my writing style. We
> are used to roman which has a specific base line, so what if we had
> either A. A base line for the letters above, a half line addition for
> ascenders, or short, round letters that float in the middle?
Basically,
> we would be adapting the paper to our letters. My favorite at the
> moment is to either write large or use (printed from computer) paper
> with smaller lines so that in essence the short letters ARE floating
in
> the middle.
>
> Well, if the writing can be changed, why not the paper?

From: "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink11@...>
Date: 2006-05-15 08:42:09 #
Subject: Re: phpGhotiFilleter, anyone?

Toggle Shavian
Welcome back, Lionel
Let me second Philip's assessment of your new filliter.
Good Show.
The Database seems a bit dry, but I am certain we will fill it
up shortly. Are there any limits on how many English words,
it can hold?
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. I like the prompting when there is more than one valid choice.
__________________________attachment___________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Philip Newton"
<philip.newton@...> wrote:
>
> On 5/14/06, Lionel Ghoti <Lionel.Ghoti@...> wrote:
> > It stores a table of Roman-Shavian word pairs in a MySQL
database. If
> > you ask it to transliterate a Roman word which it does not know,
it
> > asks you how to write it in Shavian, and then that word pair is
stored
> > in the database.
>
> Excellent!