When computers started having screens (or monitors), as well as printers, a new alphanumeric display was created using dots. A crucial variable in designing alphabet letters and digits, using dots, is the height of the display, measured in dots. This article addresses the same design questions tackled by designers of typefaces or fonts, and shows…

The question of script was paramount in the nineteenth-century debate over Hindi and Urdu, two closely related languages that are characterised by "extreme digraphia". Rather than rehearsing the well-known story of the culturally and politically charged process of differentiation in which the two sister languages became prime markers of…

Chronicles the history of text conventions (punctuation, capitalization, and typefaces) both by discussing and using them. (MS)

Outlines the structure of a printer driven program that converts Romanized texts, composed with the aid of standard word-processing software, into codes that enable a dot matrix printer to produce high-quality printouts in various non-Roman scripts. (Author/SED)

A critical step toward becoming a fluent reader is learning to recognize, name and distinguish the letters of the alphabet. This difficult task is often a point of failure. The task, however, can be made easier and less prone to failure. This article, based on research by cognitive scientists, provides guides for how to design a font that will…

Volume 1, numbers 3 and 4, of the newsletter on the use of non-Western languages with computers contains the following articles: "Reversing the Screen under MS/PC-DOS" (Dan Brink); "Comments on Diacritics Using Wordstar, etc. and CP/M Software for Non-Western Languages" (Michael Broschat); "Carving Tibetan in Silicon: A…

Two articles propose two systems for American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) translations of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): Multibet 1.0 and Unibet 1.0. Multibet 1.0 consists of a set of names and a set of ASCII translations for the letters and diacritics of the 1979 version of the "Principles of the…

Until American Calvinist missionaries created a Hawaiian alphabet and writing system after their arrival to the Hawaiian islands in 1819, all Kanaka Maoli literature was oral. By inventing a Hawaiian alphabet, the missionaries were able to teach Kanaka Maoli reading and writing; by the early 1830s the first missionary-controlled printing press was…