A text Myst Online project

General debates and discussion about the Guild of Writers and Age creation

Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby Gorobay » Tue Sep 03, 2013 6:52 pm

The glyph for the period in both D'ni Script and D'ni Script LM overlaps some letters, like d, h, r, and y, but it looks fine with other letters, like f and l. Could you fix that too?
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby zephjc » Tue Sep 03, 2013 7:58 pm

Gorobay wrote:The glyph for the period in both D'ni Script and D'ni Script LM overlaps some letters, like d, h, r, and y, but it looks fine with other letters, like f and l. Could you fix that too?


The issue is more that those characters have kerning designed so that the type flows together as a script. If you're doing it in CSS, I think with some effort you can make some custom kerning pairs (you will have to wrap them in SPANs, or do that automatically via javascript). For other things (photoshop, illustrator, etc) you can specify the kerning by hand.
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby belford » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:23 pm

Remember that for Seltani's purposes, the world creator can *only* specify plain text. Allowing CSS kerning is way beyond the scope of this change.

(Seltani does let you include non-breaking spaces to increase a word gap. I know, it's a crude workaround.)

I've added your font to http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/ui-test/font-test.html as a fourth sample. I agree that it's better. I'd go with a slightly thinner numeral stroke inside the boxes, but I'm not the one editing the font. :)
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby belford » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:28 pm

I must say that I still lean towards the old-fashioned letter encoding, rather than the Linguistic Mapping. But it's not a huge deal, and I don't think you should start remapping the font that you've got -- that's just asking for additional error and confusion.

EDIT-ADD: Also note that I'm not creating a Github issue report for this, because the D'ni font is not included in the Tworld (open-source) project. Once we've got a final version, though, I'll add a page to the wiki explaining what's going on.
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby zephjc » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:29 pm

belford wrote:Remember that for Seltani's purposes, the world creator can *only* specify plain text. Allowing CSS kerning is way beyond the scope of this change.

(Seltani does let you include non-breaking spaces to increase a word gap. I know, it's a crude workaround.)

I've added your font to http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/ui-test/font-test.html as a fourth sample. I agree that it's better. I'd go with a slightly thinner numeral stroke inside the boxes, but I'm not the one editing the font. :)


Re. the font inside Seltani, I agree — custom kerning isn't something that should be done, I merely meant on web pages in general.

I thought about going narrower, but I opted for maximal legibility for most cases. Plus, the numbers feel "solid" like that: Whereas writing is more graceful and artful, the numbers are matchematical, precise, and solid like the rock the D'ni lived in.

Ok, that's partly a retroactive excuse; mostly its about the thickness of the lines being legible.

Edit: I can copy-paste these numerals to the existing D'ni font so the original-style mixed-case input method can still be used.
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby KathAveara » Wed Sep 04, 2013 9:01 am

I'll restate my original thoughts regarding fonts that both OTS and NTS mappings should be available. Although, perhaps the current D'ni font could be altered as well, to make a more intuitive mapping for numerals 12-14 (currently @ # \, and should be changed to " £ $), based on the rest of 10-19.

Edit: I'll host the updated font(s) on my website (to be launched Saturday, at the AGM).
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby belford » Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:25 am

I've pushed out the access level change: "creator" is now "founder". I've updated the wiki to reflect this. (So "creator" can now simply be used to mean the person who built the world, aka the "writer".)

Also, portlists (bookshelves) in the world now display the instance destination as well as the world name and creator's name.
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby Acorn » Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:39 am

KathAveara wrote:
Edit: I'll host the updated font(s) on my website (to be launched Saturday, at the AGM).


ooh, a sneaky teaser trailer.... ;)
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby zephjc » Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:26 pm

KathAveara wrote:I'll restate my original thoughts regarding fonts that both OTS and NTS mappings should be available. Although, perhaps the current D'ni font could be altered as well, to make a more intuitive mapping for numerals 12-14 (currently @ # \, and should be changed to " £ $), based on the rest of 10-19.

Edit: I'll host the updated font(s) on my website (to be launched Saturday, at the AGM).


I take it you're on a British keyboard :) The ! " £ # are the characters shift + 1,2,3,4 on it, but the existing ! @ # $ are shift-1,2,3,4 on the American keyboard layout, hence its American "intuitiveness".

I don't think there is an easy solution around it for other keymappings, unfortunately.

The DLM font seems a bit more robust, but original Dni font fits in the ASCII range and is more easily typeable. E.g. the 'sh' sound as S vs š: I don't even know how to type š on my Mac; I had to copy-paste it in here. I have to switch to Icelandic key layout to type ð and þ.

Also, does the ALT+XXXX method work without the number pad?
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Re: A text Myst Online project

Postby KathAveara » Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:37 pm

American keyboards should totally follow the British design.

I don't believe Alt codes work without the keypad. Not on my keyboard at any rate.

The ASCII mapping has been criticised in the past for looking rather ugly when typed out in the Roman alphabet, due the mixing and matching of upper and lower case. However, it is very useful for beginners, since it's very easy to type. However, as I have seen many times, it's very easy to forget to use upper case. It's also very tempting to copy the abundance of 'h's used in the OTS writings you find on the internet.
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