I first mentioned Simplified Egyptian on this blog back in 2010, Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction, although the idea goes back several years before then.
The basis of Simplified Egyptian is to embed standard rules inside a font or functional equivalent (typically OpenType font) to instruct font rendering to combine hieroglyphs into predefined groups (much like the ligature ‘e’ with ‘acute’ normally combines into é e-acute).
So, why is it taking so long to implement? The first prerequisite to making Simplified Egyptian available in useful form was adding Egyptian Hieroglyphs to the Unicode standard (initiated 2006, finally released with Unicode 5.2 in October 2009). However a standard is necessary but not sufficient, popular Operating Systems (e.g. Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android) need to adequately support the standard. It is also essential that tools such as internet browsers, word processors and so on support standards compliant behaviour. Progress has been slow on all these fronts, disappointingly so.
Two positive developments during the last few months.
1. OpenType now (almost) formally recognizes the ‘egyp’ tag for fonts containing Egyptian Hieroglyphs (see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/scripttags.htm updated October 4, 2011 to bring the standard up to date, matching Unicode developments in recent years).
2. Firefox now recognizes ligatures in Egyptian fonts (not sure exactly when this happened but my test font was first seen to work correctly in Firefox 10 on Windows). Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari haven’t seen any progress in the 18 months since I published Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the Web (October 2010).
One minor negative two weeks ago. The Windows 8 consumer preview really ought to have worked since Unicode 6.x support is part of the design. However my Egyptian tests failed for Internet Explorer and several other programs and software interfaces. Hopefully those bugs will be shaken out before release and similar progress will be seen in OS X, iOS and Android before the end of 2012.
Looking at the trend it seems likely that by this time next year there will be enough pieces of the puzzle coming together to enable some useful Simplified Egyptian use scenarios on a variety of fully up to date systems with up to date software. Realistically, however, for most people 'up to date' is unlikely. Android phones are often stuck with obsolete versions of Android. Windows computers last for ages nowadays yet the cost of upgrading a version of Windows and Microsoft Office is normally prohibitively high for most people and organizations. As a rough estimate, it is going to take 3+ years before 25% of PCs (including tablets, excluding phones) are Simplified Egyptian capable.
Moving forward. Despite the apparently slow opportunities for uptake it seems worth starting the ball rolling now. Last year I created a list of about 1200 candidate rules for an implementation of Simplified Egyptian to test against the dictionary database and some sample documents. Further work is needed but I hope to provide a test implementation in InScribeX Web along with a Simplified Egyptian font this year, initially using a draft specification for the rules. IXW can be used to make sample web pages (using a downloadable version of the font) which we now know will be readable in Firefox at least. This work to be followed by ample time for comment and feedback on the specification from all, including experts in the subject. Timescales depend on when I can find some spare time (unless anyone knows of any funding!) but if all goes well, by around this time next year there will be a useable Simplified Egyptian system with at least some PC systems and a few standard apps that can use it. Then, as people upgrade systems and developers upgrade apps SE can reach out to an increasing audience.
Unfortunately a slow process with pitfalls e.g. web pages that only look correct on modern browsers unless we see a change in the habits of Apple, Google, Microsoft and other PC and device manufacturers. Most people working with hieroglyphs in software will continue to mainly use MdC-based solutions for some years to come on desktop/laptop systems. A topic I'll return to shortly.
Showing posts with label InScribeX Web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label InScribeX Web. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
InScribeX Web 3.5 available
The InScribeX Web software is now updated to preview version 3.5, replacing the previous version 3.4. The software now integrates about 30,500 references in the Egyptian dictionary database, and the accuracy level of the database has been substantially improved over 3.4. Apart from some minor performance oriented changes, there is no change to software functionality.
3.5 is the last of the 3.x series. I hope to continue the periodic update process every two to three months during 2012 as was done last year. I'm currently shooting for a 4.0 version in the Spring.
4.0 contains some usability changes and continues to support Windows and OSX platforms via Silverlight. It drops any attempt to support Linux desktop. My main objectives moving IXW forward this year are to 1. incorporate tools to enable use of Simplified Egyptian and 2. Make it easier to use Egyptian with Unicode in an up to date HTML5 Web browser context.
A note on Linux. When I started writing InScribeX Web the situation with Linux on desktop and laptop PCs looked fairly promising. Moonlight (the Linux equivalent of the Silverlight software used to deliver InScribeX in a web browser) was under active development by Novell. Since then, Linux has been very successful as the foundation of the proprietory Google Android operating system for mobile devices but interest in Linux desktop as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX has declined, not grown. The demise of Novell as an independent company caused Moonlight development to stop in an incomplete state meaning it is no longer realistic to take the current implementation of InScribeX Web onto the Linux desktop. This fact is only one consequence of the fact that the whole cross-platform perspective has changed in recent years thanks to low power microelectronics enabling interesting mobile devices. A topic I'd like to return to in the near future.
3.5 is the last of the 3.x series. I hope to continue the periodic update process every two to three months during 2012 as was done last year. I'm currently shooting for a 4.0 version in the Spring.
4.0 contains some usability changes and continues to support Windows and OSX platforms via Silverlight. It drops any attempt to support Linux desktop. My main objectives moving IXW forward this year are to 1. incorporate tools to enable use of Simplified Egyptian and 2. Make it easier to use Egyptian with Unicode in an up to date HTML5 Web browser context.
A note on Linux. When I started writing InScribeX Web the situation with Linux on desktop and laptop PCs looked fairly promising. Moonlight (the Linux equivalent of the Silverlight software used to deliver InScribeX in a web browser) was under active development by Novell. Since then, Linux has been very successful as the foundation of the proprietory Google Android operating system for mobile devices but interest in Linux desktop as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX has declined, not grown. The demise of Novell as an independent company caused Moonlight development to stop in an incomplete state meaning it is no longer realistic to take the current implementation of InScribeX Web onto the Linux desktop. This fact is only one consequence of the fact that the whole cross-platform perspective has changed in recent years thanks to low power microelectronics enabling interesting mobile devices. A topic I'd like to return to in the near future.
Friday, 14 October 2011
InScribeX Web 3.4 available
The InScribeX Web software is now updated to preview version 3.4, replacing the previous version 3.3. This uses the latest version of my word list/database for the dictionary feature. 3.4 contains over 30,000 references, representing an increase of about 2000 new entries since 3.3. There are also about 1500 corrections and clarifications to references present in the previous version. In short the database is getting close to my objectives for the first draft.
References in the dictionaries are as follows:
The largest single sub-collection of references is that from Wörterbuch which accounts for about 46% of the total number of references. Here my selection has been strongly guided by the ‘Beinlich word list’ although the German-English translations and transliterations into MdC machine coded hieroglyphs are my own.
The second largest sub-collection is from the Concise Dictionary, 38% of the total. The organisation of this Faulkner material largely follows the ‘Vygus word list’ though I’ve made a fairly large number of changes and MdC transliterations were done from scratch.
The smallest sub-collection currently is that from GHAD. This is only being used to add references relating to use of some of the rarer hieroglyphs.
I’d like to repeat and emphasise that InScribeX Web dictionaries are not intended to substitute for use of the various publications referenced. The user will want to refer directly to the Faulkner, Gardiner and other books to understand the context in which my dictionary entries are given. For instance Wörterbuch gives many alternative ‘spellings’ beyond those included in IXW at present. Egyptian Grammar has many instances of words not referenced in the current list, along with far more about the language and words beyond that of a simple list. Faulkner gives many references to the sources of his material.
To complete the first draft of the word list/database, I still have a parcel of work to tidy up references using rarer hieroglyphs so as to have a solid footing from which to tackle some practical issues of what to do with signs that are not in the Basic Egyptian Hieroglyphs set standardized in Unicode 5.2 (2009).
There is also a batch of references that needs re-checking and/or revised German-English translations.
I am therefore expecting several hundred more references and a bunch of corrections to the current set before drawing a line under this phase.
My current plan is still to incorporate these changes in a version 3.5 this winter to complete the IXW preview 3 developments. It also remains my intention to defer software changes (beyond anything of a minor technical nature) until this work is completed.
References in the dictionaries are as follows:
- AEM refers to Ancient Egyptian Medicine by J F Nunn (1996).
- DME refers to Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by R O Faulkner (1961).
- EG refers to Egyptian Grammar by A Gardiner (Third edition, 1957).
- GHAD refers to Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch-Deutsch by Rainer Hannig (2006).
- ME refers to Middle Egyptian by J P Allen (2000).
- Wb refers to Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprach by A Erman and H Grapow (1926, 1971).
The largest single sub-collection of references is that from Wörterbuch which accounts for about 46% of the total number of references. Here my selection has been strongly guided by the ‘Beinlich word list’ although the German-English translations and transliterations into MdC machine coded hieroglyphs are my own.
The second largest sub-collection is from the Concise Dictionary, 38% of the total. The organisation of this Faulkner material largely follows the ‘Vygus word list’ though I’ve made a fairly large number of changes and MdC transliterations were done from scratch.
The smallest sub-collection currently is that from GHAD. This is only being used to add references relating to use of some of the rarer hieroglyphs.
I’d like to repeat and emphasise that InScribeX Web dictionaries are not intended to substitute for use of the various publications referenced. The user will want to refer directly to the Faulkner, Gardiner and other books to understand the context in which my dictionary entries are given. For instance Wörterbuch gives many alternative ‘spellings’ beyond those included in IXW at present. Egyptian Grammar has many instances of words not referenced in the current list, along with far more about the language and words beyond that of a simple list. Faulkner gives many references to the sources of his material.
To complete the first draft of the word list/database, I still have a parcel of work to tidy up references using rarer hieroglyphs so as to have a solid footing from which to tackle some practical issues of what to do with signs that are not in the Basic Egyptian Hieroglyphs set standardized in Unicode 5.2 (2009).
There is also a batch of references that needs re-checking and/or revised German-English translations.
I am therefore expecting several hundred more references and a bunch of corrections to the current set before drawing a line under this phase.
My current plan is still to incorporate these changes in a version 3.5 this winter to complete the IXW preview 3 developments. It also remains my intention to defer software changes (beyond anything of a minor technical nature) until this work is completed.
Friday, 9 September 2011
InScribeX Web directions (September 2011)
Next week Microsoft will be making announcements about Windows 8 and I expect this will raise speculation on software futures in the press. So now seems like a good time to forestall any questions about any implications for InScribeX Web directions over the next year or so.
In short, Silverlight/.Net has been a successful technical choice for development of IXW to date and I plan to continue to use Silverlight through 2012 to further evolve IXW and explore more aspects of Ancient Egyptian in Unicode as a cross-platform Mac OSX/Windows (XP and later) solution.
Nevertheless there are some other desirable developments in Ancient Egyptian on computer that don’t fit into the IXW cross-platform approach, for instance deeper integration with other applications and efficient support for a variety of low power and touch screen devices. I’d like to share some thinking on these topics here in the near future.
Meanwhile IXW is currently at Preview 3.3 (the third update this year) and I’m on track for a 3.4 release next month. The ‘preview 3’ series to wrap this Winter with 3.5 which completes the first draft of the word list/dictionaries and incorporates more analysis on sign lists.
I’ve been holding back user interface changes until Preview 4 which is intended to enable continuation of the step by step approach I’ve taken this year. Whereas the 2011 theme has been building a more comprehensive dictionary, the main 2012 theme is teasing out the relationships between ‘Simplified Egyptian’, hieroglyphs in Unicode, and MdC encodings and I hope to continue the dynamic of updates every 2/3 months in the 4.x framework. More on this closer to the time.
In short, Silverlight/.Net has been a successful technical choice for development of IXW to date and I plan to continue to use Silverlight through 2012 to further evolve IXW and explore more aspects of Ancient Egyptian in Unicode as a cross-platform Mac OSX/Windows (XP and later) solution.
Nevertheless there are some other desirable developments in Ancient Egyptian on computer that don’t fit into the IXW cross-platform approach, for instance deeper integration with other applications and efficient support for a variety of low power and touch screen devices. I’d like to share some thinking on these topics here in the near future.
Meanwhile IXW is currently at Preview 3.3 (the third update this year) and I’m on track for a 3.4 release next month. The ‘preview 3’ series to wrap this Winter with 3.5 which completes the first draft of the word list/dictionaries and incorporates more analysis on sign lists.
I’ve been holding back user interface changes until Preview 4 which is intended to enable continuation of the step by step approach I’ve taken this year. Whereas the 2011 theme has been building a more comprehensive dictionary, the main 2012 theme is teasing out the relationships between ‘Simplified Egyptian’, hieroglyphs in Unicode, and MdC encodings and I hope to continue the dynamic of updates every 2/3 months in the 4.x framework. More on this closer to the time.
Monday, 22 August 2011
InScribeX Web 3.3 now available
I've just released the latest version of InScribeX Web. Version 3.3 is the third update this year following version 3.1 (April) and 3.2 (June). The dictionary now contains over 28,000 references, an increase of around 50% from the 3.0 version released last year.
There are no changes to system requirements to run InScribeX Web so virtually all Windows and Intel-based Mac machines are supported.
As far as the draft (EGPZ) word list used as the basis of the dictionaries is concerned, references to Egyptian Grammar (Gardiner) and Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Faulkner) are regarded as complete for the time being with this version 3.3 (aside from any remaining corrections required).
For development of the word list, I currently have a hit-list of 580 existing references needing further research and about 2500+ further references to be added before reaching my target of what to include in the first draft. In practical terms, I'm aiming for an updated 3.4 release in the Autumn as a stepping stone to a completed first draft.
Aside from the word list/dictionaries, there are other topics such as MdC and InScribe document editing, Simplified Egyptian, Egyptian in HTML, expanding the Unicode repertoire, and mathematical modelling of Egyptian. None of which are planned for 3.4 although I'm still actively prototyping in these areas.
Note. InScribeX Web is still based on Silverlight 3 (or later) in the (possibly forlorn) hope that 'Moonlight' (the Linux equivalent to Silverlight for Windows and Mac) will catch up this year. However the whole cross-platform question has moved on since the first 2009 version of InScribeX Web most visibly with the growth of the smartphone user base, and the profile of first generation mass-market Tablet/Slate devices. I'll try to address some of the questions of how this affects Ancient Egyptian in the digital world, and InScribeX in particular, in future blog posts.
There are no changes to system requirements to run InScribeX Web so virtually all Windows and Intel-based Mac machines are supported.
As far as the draft (EGPZ) word list used as the basis of the dictionaries is concerned, references to Egyptian Grammar (Gardiner) and Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Faulkner) are regarded as complete for the time being with this version 3.3 (aside from any remaining corrections required).
For development of the word list, I currently have a hit-list of 580 existing references needing further research and about 2500+ further references to be added before reaching my target of what to include in the first draft. In practical terms, I'm aiming for an updated 3.4 release in the Autumn as a stepping stone to a completed first draft.
Aside from the word list/dictionaries, there are other topics such as MdC and InScribe document editing, Simplified Egyptian, Egyptian in HTML, expanding the Unicode repertoire, and mathematical modelling of Egyptian. None of which are planned for 3.4 although I'm still actively prototyping in these areas.
Note. InScribeX Web is still based on Silverlight 3 (or later) in the (possibly forlorn) hope that 'Moonlight' (the Linux equivalent to Silverlight for Windows and Mac) will catch up this year. However the whole cross-platform question has moved on since the first 2009 version of InScribeX Web most visibly with the growth of the smartphone user base, and the profile of first generation mass-market Tablet/Slate devices. I'll try to address some of the questions of how this affects Ancient Egyptian in the digital world, and InScribeX in particular, in future blog posts.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the Web (October 2010)
One year after the release of Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Unicode 5.2 there has been some progress in making hieroglyphs usable on the web although it is still early days. I hope these notes are useful.
If you can see hieroglyphs 𓄞𓀁 in this sentence, good. Otherwise. A few notes, and you can decide whether it might be better to wait until things have moved forward a little.
Information on Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Unicode
For information on Unicode 6.0 (the latest version) see www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/. While the full text for 6.0 is being updated, refer to the 5.2 version www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch14.pdf section 14.17. The direct link to the chart is www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U13000.pdf where signs are shown using the InScribe font.
The Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs is fairly accurate as far as it goes, and contains hieroglyphs in Unicode which can be viewed given a suitable browser and font.
InScribeX Web still contains the largest set of material viewable online including sign list, dictionaries and tools. You need a Silverlight (or Moonlight) compatible system (the vast majority of PCs, Linux, Mac or Windows, are fine.). There is no requirement you install a font. I last updated InScribeX Web in May – yes it is about due for an update but time is the enemy (and I’d like to see Moonlight 3 released first anyway).
Browsers
Of the popular web browsers, only recent versions of Firefox display individual Unicode hieroglyphs correctly. I expect the situation will change over the next few months. Meanwhile, use Firefox if you want to explore the current state of the art.
Search
Right now, only Google search indexes Unicode hieroglyphs (and the transliteration characters introduced at Unicode 5.1 in 2008). I expect at some point next year Bing and Yahoo will be brought up to date but meanwhile stick with Google.
Fonts
A satisfactory treatment of hieroglyphs on the web really needs smart fonts installed on your computer. I’m on the case (see Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction) but it will take some time until all the pieces of the puzzle including browser support come together (see ISO/Unicode scripts missing in OpenType and other comments here).
Neither Apple nor Microsoft provide a suitable font at the moment as parts of, or add-ons to, iOS, OSX, or Windows.
Meanwhile, in general I can’t advise about basic free fonts to use (fonts sometimes appear on the internet without permission of copyright holders and I don't want to encourage unfair use of creative work).
I will note an ‘Aegyptus’ font is downloadable at http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ – the glyphs are apparently copied from Hieroglyphica 2000. I’ve not analyzed this yet.
For InScribe 2004 users I currently have an intermediate version of the InScribe font available on request (email me on Saqqara at [Saqqara.org] with ‘InScribe Unicode Font’ in the message title – I get a lot of spam junk mail. That way I can let you know about updates.).
Asking a user to install a font to read a web page is in general a non-starter; I think the medium term future for web sites is the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) once the dust settles on the new web browser versions in development. I’ll post here about the InScribe font in this context and make examples available when the time is ripe.
If you can see hieroglyphs 𓄞𓀁 in this sentence, good. Otherwise. A few notes, and you can decide whether it might be better to wait until things have moved forward a little.
Information on Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Unicode
For information on Unicode 6.0 (the latest version) see www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/. While the full text for 6.0 is being updated, refer to the 5.2 version www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch14.pdf section 14.17. The direct link to the chart is www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U13000.pdf where signs are shown using the InScribe font.
The Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs is fairly accurate as far as it goes, and contains hieroglyphs in Unicode which can be viewed given a suitable browser and font.
InScribeX Web still contains the largest set of material viewable online including sign list, dictionaries and tools. You need a Silverlight (or Moonlight) compatible system (the vast majority of PCs, Linux, Mac or Windows, are fine.). There is no requirement you install a font. I last updated InScribeX Web in May – yes it is about due for an update but time is the enemy (and I’d like to see Moonlight 3 released first anyway).
Browsers
Of the popular web browsers, only recent versions of Firefox display individual Unicode hieroglyphs correctly. I expect the situation will change over the next few months. Meanwhile, use Firefox if you want to explore the current state of the art.
Search
Right now, only Google search indexes Unicode hieroglyphs (and the transliteration characters introduced at Unicode 5.1 in 2008). I expect at some point next year Bing and Yahoo will be brought up to date but meanwhile stick with Google.
Fonts
A satisfactory treatment of hieroglyphs on the web really needs smart fonts installed on your computer. I’m on the case (see Simplified Egyptian: A brief Introduction) but it will take some time until all the pieces of the puzzle including browser support come together (see ISO/Unicode scripts missing in OpenType and other comments here).
Neither Apple nor Microsoft provide a suitable font at the moment as parts of, or add-ons to, iOS, OSX, or Windows.
Meanwhile, in general I can’t advise about basic free fonts to use (fonts sometimes appear on the internet without permission of copyright holders and I don't want to encourage unfair use of creative work).
I will note an ‘Aegyptus’ font is downloadable at http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ – the glyphs are apparently copied from Hieroglyphica 2000. I’ve not analyzed this yet.
For InScribe 2004 users I currently have an intermediate version of the InScribe font available on request (email me on Saqqara at [Saqqara.org] with ‘InScribe Unicode Font’ in the message title – I get a lot of spam junk mail. That way I can let you know about updates.).
Asking a user to install a font to read a web page is in general a non-starter; I think the medium term future for web sites is the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) once the dust settles on the new web browser versions in development. I’ll post here about the InScribe font in this context and make examples available when the time is ripe.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Quick test for Ancient Egyptian in web browsers (September 2010)
A quick test note to check Ancient Egyptian in Web browsers.
If you have a (Unicode 5.2 compatible) Egyptian font installed on your system, the next few lines ought to make sense:
ꜣꜢiIꜥꜤwWbBpPfFmMnNrRhHḥḤḫḪẖH̱sSšŠḳḲkKgGtTṯṮdDḏḎ
(in MdC this Egyptian transliteration reads +taa*AA*iIwWbBpPfFmMnNrRhh*HH*xx*XX*ss*SS*qq*kKgGtt*TT*dd*DD*)
𓄿𓇋𓏭𓂝𓅱𓃀𓊪𓆑𓅓𓈖𓂋𓉔𓎛𓐍𓄡𓋴𓈙𓈎𓎡𓎼𓏏𓍿𓂧𓆓
(in MdC these Egyptian hieroglyphs read +s-A-i-y-a-w-b-p-f-m-n-r-h-H-x-X-s-S-q-k-g-t-T-d-D)
In fact, this is a FAIL for hieroglyphs today on Windows for Chrome (6.0.472.63), Firefox (3.6.10) Internet Explorer 9 (Beta 9.0.7930), and Safari (5.0.2). Only Firefox successfully displays the transliteration.
Tantalizingly, the Firefox edit box does work:
Technically, all a browser needs to do is ennumerate all fonts on the host system and if the font implicit in the HTML is not present, use any font that supports the characters if available. Perhaps there needs to be some magic setting in the TrueType fonts for the browsers to work although this ought not to be necessary so I will count this as a multi-browser bug.
The lines should read:
Update. This site, Blogger, turned my HTML hieroglyph strings into entities, e.g. hieroglyphs in UTF-8 into �� etc. Firebox has a bug in this case (entities in Unicode SMP) but not when raw UTF-8 is used in HTML so Firefox is very close to working, indeed it is good for many web pages. Blogger is a bit broken, the entities are simply confusing and bring nothing to the party.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Mangaglyphics
Apparently the Japanese word manga (katakana マンガ, kanji 漫画, hiragana まんが) can be loosely translated to English as “whimsical pictures”. Distinctive manga styles have seen growing popularity outside Japan during the last few decades predominantly through comic book, cartoon, and video game formats.
Some time ago I had the crazy notion that there are some interesting ways to combine the tradition of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs with manga styles in an entertaining way, mangaglypic seemed like the word rather than the equally obvious hieromanga. Fun, possibly with some educational value.
However with the work that needs to be done on improving accessibility to non-whimsical applications of ancient Egyptian on personal computers and other devices mangaglyphic is pretty low on my software to do list.
So why mention the term right now? Partly because it looks like a mangaglyph or two are creeping unasked into the InScribeX Web user interface. Partly because I’d be delighted to hear from artists or others experimenting with this style of image. However what actually stimulated my writing today was discovering the search engine bing.com still returns zero results for mangaglyphic or related words and google.com returns only one result. So in the unlikely event the term catches on at all I wanted to state mangaglyphic is meant to be a generic word. No attempts to register trademarks etc. please.
Some time ago I had the crazy notion that there are some interesting ways to combine the tradition of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs with manga styles in an entertaining way, mangaglypic seemed like the word rather than the equally obvious hieromanga. Fun, possibly with some educational value.
However with the work that needs to be done on improving accessibility to non-whimsical applications of ancient Egyptian on personal computers and other devices mangaglyphic is pretty low on my software to do list.
So why mention the term right now? Partly because it looks like a mangaglyph or two are creeping unasked into the InScribeX Web user interface. Partly because I’d be delighted to hear from artists or others experimenting with this style of image. However what actually stimulated my writing today was discovering the search engine bing.com still returns zero results for mangaglyphic or related words and google.com returns only one result. So in the unlikely event the term catches on at all I wanted to state mangaglyphic is meant to be a generic word. No attempts to register trademarks etc. please.
Monday, 10 May 2010
InScribeX Web Preview 3 released
I have just released Preview 3 of the InScribeX Web software on http://www.inscribex.com/. This version replaces Preview 2 for Windows and Mac users and works with Silverlight version 3 or 4. Linux users will probably want to stick with Preview 2 which runs with Moonlight 2 for the time being (see note below).
As illustrated, the user interface has been changed to require less screen space. This is very useful on low resolution displays, especially those found on netbooks. I have also chosen this two page view for the dictionaries so English-Egyptian and Egyptian to English can be viewed simultaneously (although it is probable that additional ways of working with the dictionaries will follow at some point).
Some features I had hoped to include in Preview 3 have been deferred in order that the software works with the current pre-release of Moonlight 3 (Moonlight is the equivalent to Silverlight for Linux systems). I hope to update Preview 3 over the summer to track Moonlight development and make a few additions and changes to functionality, the most interesting being to add some basic UMdC editing features and include some revised dictionary content.
Preview 3 is about 25% smaller than preview 2 so loads faster over the web.
Coming soon ... InScribe Web Preview 4
Preview 4 is being developed in parallel to Preview 3 and I've adopted a development approach to allow components to be shared between the two versions. This sounds rather complicated but makes sense from my development perspective as part of the strategy of making InScribeX cross-platform over a range of computers and other devices. For the majority of Windows and Mac users, all this means is you should use Preview 3 for the time being then switch to Preview 4 when it is available (best guess sometime this summer).
Preview 4 takes advantage of new features in Silverlight 4 to enable printing and rich text editing of Egyptian texts among other enhancements. Watch this space.
InScribe Web on Linux
Moonlight 2 was released in December 2009 as a Linux FireFox plugin (this can be downloaded for popular modern Linux distributions from www.go-mono.com/moonlight/download.aspx). Moonlight 2 enables InScribe Web Preview 2 operation on Linux systems.
Pre-release 'alpha quality' Moonlight 3 plugins for Firefox and Chrome browsers on Linux can be downloaded from go-mono.com/moonlight/prerelease.aspx. InScribe Web Preview 2 appears to work as with Moonlight 2. InScribe Web Preview 3 mostly appears to run okay on the most recent (April) plugin versions. However one unavoidable problem at the moment is the full dictionaries take an extremely long time to load. I've therefore limited the dictionaries to 100 entries under Linux for the time being until the Moonlight bug is fixed (a good reason to stick with InScribe Web Preview 2). I'm planning to track Moonlight 3 pre-release versions towards release, updating Preview 3 if necessary and feasible.
All being well, Moonlight 3 will be released by Novell by Autumn with full Silverlight 3 compatibility so I can retire InScribe Web Preview 2 leaving Preview 3 a fully cross platform solution for Windows/Mac/Linux.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
HTML5, Fonts, and the Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
WOFF is a file format intended to enable downloadable fonts to be used on web pages. Developed during 2009, WOFF 1.0 was submitted last month (www.w3.org/Submission/2010/03/, April 8th 2010) by Microsoft Corporation, Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software to W3C, the standards organisation for web technology.
WOFF is not the first technology for downloadable fonts but it is the first to carry strong industry support. An implementation is already available in Firefox 3.6. WOFF is expected to be supported in new versions of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. In my opinion it is likely that WOFF will become the preferred way of including specialist fonts in HTML5 so a very positive development.
This is significant for applications of Ancient Egyptian and other specialist scripts since WOFF provides an effective way of displaying those scripts on web pages without expecting suitable fonts to have been installed on the host device. WOFF files are compressed and subsets can be used to keep download sizes much smaller than if the original (e.g. TrueType) fonts were used. There are indications that font suppliers will be open to distribution of fonts in WOFF format (in most cases commercial fonts are not licensed for distribution in TTF etc. formats although there are rules that in many instances allow embedding in documents such as PDF files).
It is impractical to use WOFF for published web sites today except for experimental purposes since the vast majority of web browsers in use do not know how to use WOFF. However software tools already exist. As far as my own work is concerned, I’m working on the assumption that over 70% of web browser usage will be WOFF compatible by the end of 2011 (though this is a pure guess!) at which point it becomes appropriate to make web pages that rely on WOFF for Egyptian.
I’d like to state the short to medium term status for my work concerning Ancient Egyptian on the web relating to WOFF.
WOFF is not the first technology for downloadable fonts but it is the first to carry strong industry support. An implementation is already available in Firefox 3.6. WOFF is expected to be supported in new versions of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. In my opinion it is likely that WOFF will become the preferred way of including specialist fonts in HTML5 so a very positive development.
This is significant for applications of Ancient Egyptian and other specialist scripts since WOFF provides an effective way of displaying those scripts on web pages without expecting suitable fonts to have been installed on the host device. WOFF files are compressed and subsets can be used to keep download sizes much smaller than if the original (e.g. TrueType) fonts were used. There are indications that font suppliers will be open to distribution of fonts in WOFF format (in most cases commercial fonts are not licensed for distribution in TTF etc. formats although there are rules that in many instances allow embedding in documents such as PDF files).
It is impractical to use WOFF for published web sites today except for experimental purposes since the vast majority of web browsers in use do not know how to use WOFF. However software tools already exist. As far as my own work is concerned, I’m working on the assumption that over 70% of web browser usage will be WOFF compatible by the end of 2011 (though this is a pure guess!) at which point it becomes appropriate to make web pages that rely on WOFF for Egyptian.
I’d like to state the short to medium term status for my work concerning Ancient Egyptian on the web relating to WOFF.
- InScribeX Web integrates a version of my InScribe font so doesn’t rely on browser support. I expect WOFF support will become part of the InScribeX story at some point in time, but not during 2010.
- Meanwhile I'd be pleased to hear from anyone also looking at WOFF applications for Egyptian in Unicode and HTML5.
- I’m interested in the use of ligatures and combining rules to enable ‘Simplified Egyptian’ to be written without markup so will be testing some WOFF implementations to try and detect any bugs in OpenType feature handling so these can be eliminated by the time browser support for WOFF is widely available.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Silverlight 4 Release, Moonlight 3 Preview, and InScribeX Web
Last Thursday Microsoft released Silverlight 4, a significant milestone for the InScribeX Web project since SL4 brings a useful set of new functionality for delivering the InScribeX Web approach to Ancient Egyptian. Silverlight 4 runs on Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Mac OSX (Intel systems). No platform change since version 3 beyond Google Chrome web browser now officially supported.
Meanwhile Novell continues development of Moonlight, the open source Linux equivalent to Silverlight. Moonlight is running several months behind Silverlight with the current release Moonlight 2 corresponding to Silverlight 2. Moonlight 3 release is expected sometime this Summer although previews have been available since February and the latest version (preview 6) made available last week is in pretty good shape.
With that background, I thought it would be useful to state now how these changes are affecting InScribeX Web.
InScribe Web Preview 2
I made this version available in July last year to run on Silverlight 2 not long before Silverlight 3 appeared. This version is still available and runs with Moonlight 2 on Linux as well as Silverlight 2, 3 or 4. I expect this version to remain live, unchanged, until a few weeks after Moonlight 3 release. At that point I expect to retire this version as there will be no need to continue Silverlight 2 compatibility.
InScribe Web Preview 3
This version is written for Silverlight 3 and tested to work with Moonlight 3 previews and Silverlight 4 release. I've held back on making this available until Silverlight 4 was released and out in the field for a couple of weeks so probably an early May release date. As it stands this version is not greatly enhanced over preview 2 although I've changed the interface to make more effective use of screen space and added a bunch of behind the scenes changes. This redesign especially benefits netbooks and other low resolution devices. I'll probably migrate some features of Preview 4 back into Preview 3 for the sake of Linux users once Moonlight 3 is available and before the Moonlight 4 release. In particular some UMdC support. Once Moonlight 4 is available (Winter?) this version can be retired and Preview 4 used cross platform.
InScribe Web Preview 4
Preview 4 requires Silverlight 4 or later and makes use of some of the new functionality, notably to enable rich text editing and printing. Probably late May/early June for the first cut then some incremental changes to follow during the rest of the year. Preview 4 introduces and supports a new file format for texts incorporating Ancient Egyptian, namely UMdC (Unicode Manuel de Codage).
About UMdC
The question of file formats for hieroglyphs and Ancient Egyptian has been a thorn in my side for some time. The problem is not how to devise ways of representing Egyptian in interesting and more powerful representations but rather how to evolve current ways of working with hieroglyphs without adding unnecessary complications in forseeable future directions. I've finally settled on this UMdC approach as the simplest solution to remove this blockage. A topic I hope to cover in more depth tomorrow.
Meanwhile Novell continues development of Moonlight, the open source Linux equivalent to Silverlight. Moonlight is running several months behind Silverlight with the current release Moonlight 2 corresponding to Silverlight 2. Moonlight 3 release is expected sometime this Summer although previews have been available since February and the latest version (preview 6) made available last week is in pretty good shape.
With that background, I thought it would be useful to state now how these changes are affecting InScribeX Web.
InScribe Web Preview 2
I made this version available in July last year to run on Silverlight 2 not long before Silverlight 3 appeared. This version is still available and runs with Moonlight 2 on Linux as well as Silverlight 2, 3 or 4. I expect this version to remain live, unchanged, until a few weeks after Moonlight 3 release. At that point I expect to retire this version as there will be no need to continue Silverlight 2 compatibility.
InScribe Web Preview 3
This version is written for Silverlight 3 and tested to work with Moonlight 3 previews and Silverlight 4 release. I've held back on making this available until Silverlight 4 was released and out in the field for a couple of weeks so probably an early May release date. As it stands this version is not greatly enhanced over preview 2 although I've changed the interface to make more effective use of screen space and added a bunch of behind the scenes changes. This redesign especially benefits netbooks and other low resolution devices. I'll probably migrate some features of Preview 4 back into Preview 3 for the sake of Linux users once Moonlight 3 is available and before the Moonlight 4 release. In particular some UMdC support. Once Moonlight 4 is available (Winter?) this version can be retired and Preview 4 used cross platform.
InScribe Web Preview 4
Preview 4 requires Silverlight 4 or later and makes use of some of the new functionality, notably to enable rich text editing and printing. Probably late May/early June for the first cut then some incremental changes to follow during the rest of the year. Preview 4 introduces and supports a new file format for texts incorporating Ancient Egyptian, namely UMdC (Unicode Manuel de Codage).
About UMdC
The question of file formats for hieroglyphs and Ancient Egyptian has been a thorn in my side for some time. The problem is not how to devise ways of representing Egyptian in interesting and more powerful representations but rather how to evolve current ways of working with hieroglyphs without adding unnecessary complications in forseeable future directions. I've finally settled on this UMdC approach as the simplest solution to remove this blockage. A topic I hope to cover in more depth tomorrow.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Novell releases Moonlight 2. InScribeX Web 2 now available on Linux.
Novell has today released Moonlight 2, their open source Linux implementation of Silverlight 2.
After trying the first Moonlight 2 preview back in May and testing out several preview versions and nine ‘beta’ versions, needless to say the first thing I checked was the current (July) release of InScribeX Web to see if it is working at last. Sigh of relief!
InScribeX Web is software for working with Ancient Egyptian, including the Basic Egyptian Hieroglyphs added recently to Unicode (5.2). InScribeX has therefore now hit an early goal of running cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The Novell press release (www.novell.com/nl-nl/news/press/new-release-of-moonlight-now-available/) also announced an update to their agreement with Microsoft to include Microsoft support for development/testing of Moonlight versions 3 and 4. Novell is working towards a Q1 2010 preview of Moonlight 3 for release in Q3 with Moonlight 4 to follow ‘shortly thereafter’. Miguel de Icaza describes some technical features, including parts of Moonlight 3 functionality already present in 2 at his blog, tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-17.html.
As noted here last week, my InScribeX Web development is now targetting Silverlight 4 as 'InScribeX Web 4' for the spring 2010 timeframe. Reasons include better desktop deployment, printing, rich text support and improved InScribe 2004SE interoperability. Whether some IW4 features might find their way into a Moonlight/Silverlight 2 or 3 compatible version for Linux is an open question. As always, time is the enemy.
Caveats. Some devices such as the Amazon Kindle use Linux but are not user configurable. Hand held devices in general would not be ideal for InScribeX Web because of input and/or small screen size, even if Silverlight or Moonlight were available. Likewise games consoles where I'd need to add controller support and a redesigned interface for widespread accessability. All the same, apparently Silverlight or Moonlight implementations for Windows Mobile, XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii are in various stages of development so it will be interesting to see what possibilities arise during 2010.
After trying the first Moonlight 2 preview back in May and testing out several preview versions and nine ‘beta’ versions, needless to say the first thing I checked was the current (July) release of InScribeX Web to see if it is working at last. Sigh of relief!
InScribeX Web is software for working with Ancient Egyptian, including the Basic Egyptian Hieroglyphs added recently to Unicode (5.2). InScribeX has therefore now hit an early goal of running cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The Novell press release (www.novell.com/nl-nl/news/press/new-release-of-moonlight-now-available/) also announced an update to their agreement with Microsoft to include Microsoft support for development/testing of Moonlight versions 3 and 4. Novell is working towards a Q1 2010 preview of Moonlight 3 for release in Q3 with Moonlight 4 to follow ‘shortly thereafter’. Miguel de Icaza describes some technical features, including parts of Moonlight 3 functionality already present in 2 at his blog, tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-17.html.
As noted here last week, my InScribeX Web development is now targetting Silverlight 4 as 'InScribeX Web 4' for the spring 2010 timeframe. Reasons include better desktop deployment, printing, rich text support and improved InScribe 2004SE interoperability. Whether some IW4 features might find their way into a Moonlight/Silverlight 2 or 3 compatible version for Linux is an open question. As always, time is the enemy.
Caveats. Some devices such as the Amazon Kindle use Linux but are not user configurable. Hand held devices in general would not be ideal for InScribeX Web because of input and/or small screen size, even if Silverlight or Moonlight were available. Likewise games consoles where I'd need to add controller support and a redesigned interface for widespread accessability. All the same, apparently Silverlight or Moonlight implementations for Windows Mobile, XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii are in various stages of development so it will be interesting to see what possibilities arise during 2010.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Designing InScribeX Web version 4: Introduction
During the next few months I’m hoping to find enough time to complete the next version of InScribeX Web (see http://www.inscribex.com/ for the current technical preview). The idea of InScribeX Web is to provide some useful tools for working with Ancient Egyptian in Unicode without the need to buy or install specialist software.
For technical reasons, the next preview of InScribeX Web is unlikely to be online before March/April 2010 so I’ve decided that the best way forward is to blog on the subject so interested parties can follow the development work as it happens. There is no substitute for using software, rather than reading about it, but at least this way gives some opportunity for feedback.
Incidentally I’ve only just discovered my email spam filter had grown too aggressive (it’s a balancing act when one has a public email address) so please try again if you have attempted but failed to contact me in recent weeks.
In parallel with this development I’m continuing to work on a new version of InScribe 2004, namely InScribe 2004SE (Second Edition), which despite the 2004 handle is in fact a major functional upgrade which enables use of Unicode and refreshes the software to take advantage of new features in Windows Vista and 7 while retaining the mode of use and features of the original edition. This is relevant to InScribeX Web as the two are being designed to complement each other when the commercial InScribe 2004SE software is installed.
InScribeX Web uses the Microsoft Silverlight plugin for Web Browsers. The main reason for this choice is simple, I needed the most cost effective way of creating advanced internet software: the project is unfunded so there was no scope for the luxury of developing under more time consuming alternatives such as Adobe AIR or Google Gears (fortunately as Gears is no longer being developed in favour of Google changing tack to an as yet to be clarified HTML 5 approach in ChromeOS etc.). Practicalities aside, Silverlight also allows for fun graphics and other effects and must admit I rather enjoy having these facilities to hand as a refreshing change to the more formal approach necessary in the InScribe 2004SE development.
The choice of Silverlight is not without controversy, nor without complication from a developer perspective. The current InScribeX Web preview was written for Silverlight 2. Silverlight 3 was released in July adding new features and Silverlight 4 announced in November for release in the spring. If that is not enough, the Linux equivalent (Moonlight, developed as an open source project by Novell) is running some distance behind Silverlight itself with Moonlight 2 not expected to be released until early next year (when I built the InScribe Web technical preview, the Moonlight release was expected late Summer).
To sidestep the version complications, InScribeX Web development is now targeting Silverlight 4 (expected in March/April 2010, I am currently using the developer-only Beta preview) and for those interested in such matters I‘m using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (with some Expression Blend) as the development environment. There are some major benefits using 4 which I’ll run over another day. It’s a pure guess but I’m half expecting version 4 to be the point at which Silverlight hits prime time; we shall see.
Unfortunately, this is not good news for Linux users! My thinking at the moment is to wait until Moonlight 2 is released and the current technical preview working and then make a call on what to do. I’m actually very keen on making InScribeX available on Linux (the X means cross-platform) but it would be perverse to penalize the 95% (or whatever it is) of the internet population who can use Silverlight.
For technical reasons, the next preview of InScribeX Web is unlikely to be online before March/April 2010 so I’ve decided that the best way forward is to blog on the subject so interested parties can follow the development work as it happens. There is no substitute for using software, rather than reading about it, but at least this way gives some opportunity for feedback.
Incidentally I’ve only just discovered my email spam filter had grown too aggressive (it’s a balancing act when one has a public email address) so please try again if you have attempted but failed to contact me in recent weeks.
In parallel with this development I’m continuing to work on a new version of InScribe 2004, namely InScribe 2004SE (Second Edition), which despite the 2004 handle is in fact a major functional upgrade which enables use of Unicode and refreshes the software to take advantage of new features in Windows Vista and 7 while retaining the mode of use and features of the original edition. This is relevant to InScribeX Web as the two are being designed to complement each other when the commercial InScribe 2004SE software is installed.
InScribeX Web uses the Microsoft Silverlight plugin for Web Browsers. The main reason for this choice is simple, I needed the most cost effective way of creating advanced internet software: the project is unfunded so there was no scope for the luxury of developing under more time consuming alternatives such as Adobe AIR or Google Gears (fortunately as Gears is no longer being developed in favour of Google changing tack to an as yet to be clarified HTML 5 approach in ChromeOS etc.). Practicalities aside, Silverlight also allows for fun graphics and other effects and must admit I rather enjoy having these facilities to hand as a refreshing change to the more formal approach necessary in the InScribe 2004SE development.
The choice of Silverlight is not without controversy, nor without complication from a developer perspective. The current InScribeX Web preview was written for Silverlight 2. Silverlight 3 was released in July adding new features and Silverlight 4 announced in November for release in the spring. If that is not enough, the Linux equivalent (Moonlight, developed as an open source project by Novell) is running some distance behind Silverlight itself with Moonlight 2 not expected to be released until early next year (when I built the InScribe Web technical preview, the Moonlight release was expected late Summer).
To sidestep the version complications, InScribeX Web development is now targeting Silverlight 4 (expected in March/April 2010, I am currently using the developer-only Beta preview) and for those interested in such matters I‘m using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (with some Expression Blend) as the development environment. There are some major benefits using 4 which I’ll run over another day. It’s a pure guess but I’m half expecting version 4 to be the point at which Silverlight hits prime time; we shall see.
Unfortunately, this is not good news for Linux users! My thinking at the moment is to wait until Moonlight 2 is released and the current technical preview working and then make a call on what to do. I’m actually very keen on making InScribeX available on Linux (the X means cross-platform) but it would be perverse to penalize the 95% (or whatever it is) of the internet population who can use Silverlight.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)