When I made my elven font ( https://www.behance.net/gallery/56880001/Tengwar-Sindarin-Latin-and-Cyrillic ) I didn't do a detailed research into Tolkien fandom, just did the font. Then some of them pointed out to me that the alphabet messes the original idea, because Tengwar is in tabular form, as indeed the Japanese kanas are. I thought about it and decided that the output system should override the the input one, in this particular case - so no tables. If someone has a better idea of doing things, let them do it thems-elves.
Also, quite unlike the source script, these type of fonts have very, very limited use.
Tengwar and Cirth need tabular presentation; featural scripts are funny like that. The tables make the systematic changes clear (which is the entire point of a featural system). An alphabet, in contrast, is a basically haphazard assemblage of unrelated glyphs, with little if any system. Very different requirements.
These shows conducted
on-the-street interviews with foreigners who had no trouble reading words
written in this font, but most Japanese people couldn’t read it. I don’t mean
they had trouble reading it—I mean they couldn’t read it at all. Their knowledge
of the characters which the letters were based on completely overrode their ability
to make out the Latin (romaji) forms.
This is brilliant. I had a look at the web site and even as a native Latin reader I really struggled not to read it as kana. I think you could probably push it further in the kana direction if you wanted to - the C could be squarer on the left and the downstroke of the T positioned more to the right. Then I'd be completely lost...
But speaking of the web site, I really appreciated this:
In a certain context, Electroharmonix['s] can be construed as culturally insensitive and can contribute to casual racism. Research before using this font to ensure you’re not using it to perpetuate cultural stereotypes.
If only *@%!$* Samarkan came with a similar warning...
Comments
I thought about it and decided that the output system should override the the input one, in this particular case - so no tables. If someone has a better idea of doing things, let them do it thems-elves.
Also, quite unlike the source script, these type of fonts have very, very limited use.
But speaking of the web site, I really appreciated this:
Florian Pircher said: