Tangut Yinchuan font have an error for vertical layout[edit]

Hello, Mr. Andrew, I’m very glad to see you provide such a good font as this for Tangut script. But I have fond a problem just now. I have tried to make an Unicode reproduction of Bushell's 1896 decipherment of Tangut characters on Wikisource, but every glyphs looks sightly lower when I use Tangut Yinchuan font, and when I try Tangut N4694 font, this problem is disappeared. can you fix that? --Great Brightstar (talk) 16:09, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned on the Tangut Yinchuan download page "The font currently does not support vertical layout". This is because my font editor does not support the required OpenType tables for vertical layout. I have made a feature request to support vertical matrix tables, and when they re supported in my font editor I will implement them in the Tangut Yinchuan font. If you want to have the Chinese and Tangut characters lining up exactly it would be best to layout using a table rather than by applying vertical orientation. BabelStone (talk) 16:39, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What if you try another font editor, for example, FontForge? --Great Brightstar (talk) 18:25, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

About BabelStone Marchen[edit]

Hello Andrew,

I have tested BabelStone Marchen font, I found HarfBuzz v1.3.3 seems is the minimum version that can make this font works. Firefox intergrated this version in 52.0, maybe this version can let this font works. I have also tested this font with LibreOffice 5.3.0 beta2, which intergrated HarfBuzz on all platforms, also make this font works proper. But one problem is 𑲌+𑲱 does not joined. --Great Brightstar (talk) 16:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for testing, and for the instructions on testing with HarfBuzz. I have just downloaded and tested with HarfBuzz, and it does look good except for 𑲌+𑲱. I have checked the OpenType substitutions in the font, and the substitution for u11C8C + u11CB1 is correctly included, so I cannot see why the substitution is not working. I will do comprehensive testing using HarfBuzz tomorrow, and report back here. BTW I have been working on my Mongolian/Manchu font over the holidays, and hope it will be ready soon (I'm not using ManchuFont2005 as it just copies glyphs from the Unicode code charts, which I can do better myself). BabelStone (talk) 18:10, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some testing, and found the problem with 'i' (glyph for the i vowels sign were being reordered before the base consonant, which I did not expect). I'll release a new version of the font in a day or two. BabelStone (talk) 21:55, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've released a new version of BabelStone Marchen that I have tested and verified as working correctly with HarfBuzz 1.3.4. BabelStone (talk) 16:18, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh~yeah, I have already get new version, it looks better. BTW I found this font also works with LibreOffice 5.3 RC. --Great Brightstar (talk) 05:46, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Shintani Tadahiko[edit]

Hi Andrew. Would you mind helping me fight this speedy deletion Shintani Tadahiko. Thanks Tibetologist (talk) 23:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you making it harder for bilinguals (and me) to cross-check the Kim Jong-nam Article?[edit]

Extended content
Dear Babelstone, Before you reverted the Kim Jong-nam article, it was easy reaching the https://ko.wikipedia.org/cek_berpalang article. Now you made it unbelievably, unnecessarily hard again. People like me can cross-check more quickly and carefully if there's a small convenience. I accept, of course, the argument that not every article should match every other article across langauge zones. But there are some articles where all the other langauges are more reliable, and more tamper-proof and tamper-evident, than the one that's under an Authoritarian's control. Generally speaking, the Kim Jong-nam Article has to be under regular cross-check with a range of other langauges. We can start with es.wikipedia.org, if you like. I couldn't care less, and i don't have any interest in making English the dominant langauge, or the single source of truth. I'm interested in piercing Authoritarian Disinformation Bubbles quickly, with civic engagement spontaneous among bilinguals across all langauges that participate in Wikipedia when major flashpoints emerge that show extremely questionable gaps in belief that can provoke, among other things, raw war movements to rage on. Whether this dynasty lives on or not, and how, affects people who are dying of hunger in the Hermit Kingdom. It's irresponsible to dial out all other langauge blocs from the perverse editorial incentives that one langauge bloc might be facing for a moment from its Controlling Minders. But look, beyond the philosophical that may be between us, you just made my life significantly harder, and are chilling a link syntax that facilitates fact-checking. Do you really contend that the statements documented on the Talk Page were reasonable entries on ko.wikipedia.org? Did you read my reasons for starting this on the Alexander Litvinenko page, which experienced such "drift" from the factually true? Or did you just not do some due diligence checking the Talk Page before erasing / reverting the cross-lingual factcheck link? Are you familiar with what's going on right now with Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia? Would you like ko.wikipedia.org to be factually and bias cross-checked with Malay, Español, and Deutsche all at once, instead of English? I'm just not convinced that ko.wikipedia.org should be anything but questioned and recused for a brief lock-out time, until bilinguals from outside DPRK have a chance to correct this ridiculous trash that Kim Jong-nam was asssassinated in 02012 by his own father. The same holds true for the Litvinenko article HSTRY, which is filled with self-serving, protective Putin Polonium / Plutonium Presidency trash. Wikipedia needs to grow up, i would dare say, and learn how Authoritarians abuse Wikipedia to spread fact-denying, Wk³⁶-freedom-chilling, powerholder-inoculating myth. And let's be real: we also have to think about who the audience of the Litvinenko Inquiry, for instance, really was. It had more relevance to the world than an exclusive English Modeling of the Transcript suggests. They really should have translated that, to make it easier for RU Speakers to incorporate into local and global RU media, including ru.wikipedia.org. But accepting that it wasn't, we have a duty to help bilinguals move back and forth between the versions of controversial articles and target highly nonfactual, disinforming discrepencies and really deliberate framing biases that are beyond bilingual tolerance levels and favor the ruling factions with cultivations of doubt that aren't supported by the evidence. Litvinenko and Kim Jong-nam are but two 'training cases'. You'll be able to find more. I'll switch over to ms.wikipedia.org mutual fact-checks, and i'll drop the link on both the ko.wikipedia.org and ms.wikipedia.org pages. MS > KO, KO > MS Bilinguals can work this babble coming out of DPRK better than any others. I'm just worried that the Wikipedia crews in ms.wikipedia.org are more short-handed than that in es.wikipedia.org, for instance, and i can't spend the rest of my life translating and cross-checking this alone. I'm also very reliant on machine translation, and bias flagging still frequently defies machine translation. I mean, not in these cases: this bias is more clear and transparent than the ash cloud from a volcanic explosion. (Ok, not the most conventional metapour.. but it gets the point across.) https://ms.wikipedia.org/정확도_검토 for ko.wikipedia.org https://ko.wikipedia.org/cek_berpalang for ms.wikipedia.org So, each is cross-checked by the other, and Wk³⁶ minimizes structural assumptions about which is going to be more faithful to the truth. The word "cross check" is translated natively and included in the link text, but the link actually goes straight to the cross-check langauge. I'm happy testing this syntax out, but i can't keep getting reverted. I'll just get exhausted arguing this need for integrity cross-checking over and over again with different reverting editors in different langauge blocs. Wikipedia should benefit from openness and transparency, not from compartmentalizing langauges into unconversing schisms and letting langauge media monopolists __in that langauge__ take practically exclusive strong influence over corrupting the fact base upon which public opinion rests. The severely fraudulently named DPRK is exceptionally strong at institutionalizing mass psychoses. This is an incontestable fact. So when a major event like the assassination of the leader's most well-entrenched lineal critic dies by VX Nerve Gas, we should expect a bit of turbulence requiring some fact base cross-checking. There's this additional complication with URL Encoding: that makes accurate link construction a bit harder for certain langauges, like what convention calls "CJK" (Putonghua +, Nihongo, and Chosŏn-ŏ, or Россия Rossiya, i.e. Russian, and many others that may not reach cross check targets otherwise. I thank you for reverting me, because it actually did contribute dramatically to generalizing this process more properly. I was over-reliant on EN; i should have turned right from EN for Litvinenko to MS for Kim Jong-nam. This proposal has become a great deal more systematic, at start, as a result of the reversion. It's still a bit incomplete, but i'm pretty confident MS will handle it. I'm just worried about other cases, with smaller numbers of speakers. But even there, if there's knowledge in the legal and policy planning systems, for instance, that this is a site for cross-checking truth-seeking vigilance, there should be a wide range of Bilinguals ready to jump into the fray. I've considered including a link to a Machine Translator, too, but everyone on the web ought to know at this point how to access Translate, and i would not want to lock one Machine Translator over another. But yes, it's not impossible for someone to corrupt the Translate Tool if the Translate Machinery is local to a Censorious Regime, or owned or algorithmically influenced by a Complicit Regime that can press or pressure for Translation favors. There are a lot of engineers living and writing under oppression. Wikipedians must stay vigilant of that systempunkt on cross-checking. It's a convenient middleware position for some media systems to launch a media attack or confound fact-checking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamtheclayman (talk • contribs) 01:39, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply] As a Programmer, the edge and corner cases also need to be discussed, but i'll resist and refrain, out of respect for the native spirit of offended Nations. Small speaker counts have a way of getting loud when a moment requires it.

Extended content

Dear Babelstone,

Before you reverted the Kim Jong-nam article, it was easy reaching the https://ko.wikipedia.org/cek_berpalang article. Now you made it unbelievably, unnecessarily hard again. People like me can cross-check more quickly and carefully if there's a small convenience.

I accept, of course, the argument that not every article should match every other article across langauge zones. But there are some articles where all the other langauges are more reliable, and more tamper-proof and tamper-evident, than the one that's under an Authoritarian's control.

Generally speaking, the Kim Jong-nam Article has to be under regular cross-check with a range of other langauges. We can start with es.wikipedia.org, if you like. I couldn't care less, and i don't have any interest in making English the dominant langauge, or the single source of truth. I'm interested in piercing Authoritarian Disinformation Bubbles quickly, with civic engagement spontaneous among bilinguals across all langauges that participate in Wikipedia when major flashpoints emerge that show extremely questionable gaps in belief that can provoke, among other things, raw war movements to rage on.

Whether this dynasty lives on or not, and how, affects people who are dying of hunger in the Hermit Kingdom. It's irresponsible to dial out all other langauge blocs from the perverse editorial incentives that one langauge bloc might be facing for a moment from its Controlling Minders.

But look, beyond the philosophical that may be between us, you just made my life significantly harder, and are chilling a link syntax that facilitates fact-checking.

Do you really contend that the statements documented on the Talk Page were reasonable entries on ko.wikipedia.org?

Did you read my reasons for starting this on the Alexander Litvinenko page, which experienced such "drift" from the factually true? Or did you just not do some due diligence checking the Talk Page before erasing / reverting the cross-lingual factcheck link? Are you familiar with what's going on right now with Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia? Would you like ko.wikipedia.org to be factually and bias cross-checked with Malay, Español, and Deutsche all at once, instead of English? I'm just not convinced that ko.wikipedia.org should be anything but questioned and recused for a brief lock-out time, until bilinguals from outside DPRK have a chance to correct this ridiculous trash that Kim Jong-nam was asssassinated in 02012 by his own father.

The same holds true for the Litvinenko article HSTRY, which is filled with self-serving, protective Putin Polonium / Plutonium Presidency trash. Wikipedia needs to grow up, i would dare say, and learn how Authoritarians abuse Wikipedia to spread fact-denying, Wk³⁶-freedom-chilling, powerholder-inoculating myth. And let's be real: we also have to think about who the audience of the Litvinenko Inquiry, for instance, really was. It had more relevance to the world than an exclusive English Modeling of the Transcript suggests. They really should have translated that, to make it easier for RU Speakers to incorporate into local and global RU media, including ru.wikipedia.org. But accepting that it wasn't, we have a duty to help bilinguals move back and forth between the versions of controversial articles and target highly nonfactual, disinforming discrepencies and really deliberate framing biases that are beyond bilingual tolerance levels and favor the ruling factions with cultivations of doubt that aren't supported by the evidence.

Litvinenko and Kim Jong-nam are but two 'training cases'. You'll be able to find more. I'll switch over to ms.wikipedia.org mutual fact-checks, and i'll drop the link on both the ko.wikipedia.org and ms.wikipedia.org pages. MS > KO, KO > MS Bilinguals can work this babble coming out of DPRK better than any others. I'm just worried that the Wikipedia crews in ms.wikipedia.org are more short-handed than that in es.wikipedia.org, for instance, and i can't spend the rest of my life translating and cross-checking this alone. I'm also very reliant on machine translation, and bias flagging still frequently defies machine translation. I mean, not in these cases: this bias is more clear and transparent than the ash cloud from a volcanic explosion. (Ok, not the most conventional metapour.. but it gets the point across.)

https://ms.wikipedia.org/정확도_검토 for ko.wikipedia.org

https://ko.wikipedia.org/cek_berpalang for ms.wikipedia.org

So, each is cross-checked by the other, and Wk³⁶ minimizes structural assumptions about which is going to be more faithful to the truth. The word "cross check" is translated natively and included in the link text, but the link actually goes straight to the cross-check langauge. I'm happy testing this syntax out, but i can't keep getting reverted. I'll just get exhausted arguing this need for integrity cross-checking over and over again with different reverting editors in different langauge blocs. Wikipedia should benefit from openness and transparency, not from compartmentalizing langauges into unconversing schisms and letting langauge media monopolists __in that langauge__ take practically exclusive strong influence over corrupting the fact base upon which public opinion rests. The severely fraudulently named DPRK is exceptionally strong at institutionalizing mass psychoses. This is an incontestable fact. So when a major event like the assassination of the leader's most well-entrenched lineal critic dies by VX Nerve Gas, we should expect a bit of turbulence requiring some fact base cross-checking.

There's this additional complication with URL Encoding: that makes accurate link construction a bit harder for certain langauges, like what convention calls "CJK" (Putonghua +, Nihongo, and Chosŏn-ŏ, or Россия Rossiya, i.e. Russian, and many others that may not reach cross check targets otherwise.

I thank you for reverting me, because it actually did contribute dramatically to generalizing this process more properly. I was over-reliant on EN; i should have turned right from EN for Litvinenko to MS for Kim Jong-nam. This proposal has become a great deal more systematic, at start, as a result of the reversion. It's still a bit incomplete, but i'm pretty confident MS will handle it. I'm just worried about other cases, with smaller numbers of speakers. But even there, if there's knowledge in the legal and policy planning systems, for instance, that this is a site for cross-checking truth-seeking vigilance, there should be a wide range of Bilinguals ready to jump into the fray.

I've considered including a link to a Machine Translator, too, but everyone on the web ought to know at this point how to access Translate, and i would not want to lock one Machine Translator over another. But yes, it's not impossible for someone to corrupt the Translate Tool if the Translate Machinery is local to a Censorious Regime, or owned or algorithmically influenced by a Complicit Regime that can press or pressure for Translation favors. There are a lot of engineers living and writing under oppression. Wikipedians must stay vigilant of that systempunkt on cross-checking. It's a convenient middleware position for some media systems to launch a media attack or confound fact-checking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamtheclayman (talk • contribs) 01:39, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a Programmer, the edge and corner cases also need to be discussed, but i'll resist and refrain, out of respect for the native spirit of offended Nations. Small speaker counts have a way of getting loud when a moment requires it.

Unicode Roadmap[edit]

Hello. Do you have an idea which TUS chapters will cover Nushu, Soyombo, and Zanabazar Square? I'll need to know in order to update the roadmap graphic when the time comes. FYI: I've started a draft for 10.0 Unicode block histories at User:Drmccreedy/sandbox5. DRMcCreedy (talk) 21:55, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that I don't know as I am not on the Unicode editorial committee. You will probably just have to wait until the 10.0.0 page is updated. Thank you for all your hard work adding block histories, which is a very important task! Incidentally, I think you should wikilink the names of proposal submitters on first usage for each article where there is a Wikipedia article for them. BabelStone (talk) 10:57, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the kudos. I've added authorlinks per your suggestion. I'm aware of these articles: András Róna-Tas, Andrew West (linguist), Behdad Esfahbod, Chris Lilley (computer scientist), Erik Hornung, George Kiraz, Gregory Anderson (linguist), Guillaume Jacques, Hugh McGregor Ross, István Perczel, Jennifer 8. Lee, John Baines (Egyptologist), Jost Gippert, K. David Harrison, Ken Lunde, Konrad Tuchscherer, Lee Collins (Unicode), Mark Davis (Unicode), Michael Everson, Michael Witzel, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nicholas Sims-Williams, R K Joshi, Ray Larabie, Richard G. Salomon (academic), Robert Elsie, Tatsuo Kobayashi, Bairagi Kainla, V. S. Achuthanandan, and William H. Baxter.
Let me know of any others and I'll add them. I'm sure there are many others eluding me. DRMcCreedy (talk) 17:13, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, that is a lot more than I was aware of! If I see any others I'll add them. BabelStone (talk)

POTD notification[edit]

Hi BabelStone,

Just to let you know, the Featured Picture File:Odiham Castle.jpg is scheduled to be Picture of the Day on June 3, 2017. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2017-06-03. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 07:53, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Frome Hoard ? GA nom[edit]

As you are a major contributor to the Frome Hoard I wanted to ask if there is anything else you think needs to be done to the article to ensure it meets the Good article criteria? Do you think a GA nomination would be appropriate? If there are any issues I would be happy to try to address them - perhaps we could discuss on the article talk page?— Rod ^talk 14:10, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rod, good to hear you are still interested in this article (can't believe that it is already almost 7 years old!). I've had bad experiences with GA reviews in the past, so I don't have a good feeling for what makes a successful GA nomination other than the obvious need to ensure everything is correctly referenced and all the links are up to date. I wonder if there are any recent publications on Roman British history that discuss the Frome Hoard, and put it in context. BabelStone (talk) 16:33, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The only book I have on it is Moorhead, Sam; Booth, Anna; Bland, Roger (2010). The Frome Hoard. British Museum. ISBN 9780714123349.. I've taken over 100 articles through the GA process with few problems & the article "feels" like it would meet GA to me so I'd be happy to nominate it if no-one else (I put the message on the talk page of the leading three authors) sees any major problems.— Rod ^talk 16:45, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Request for uploads to Wikimedia Commons.[edit]

Hello, I'm not sure if you're the same BabelStone as the blog about Khitan, Tangut, and Jurchen scripts but apparently the owner of that blog/websites has several ancient Chinese coins with the aforementioned scripts, if you are that BabelStone then could you please upload your entire collection(s) to Wikimedia Commons? To help improve the page Western Xia coinage with an image of a Tangut coin in Tangut script? --42.112.159.184 (talk) 02:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

End of interest[edit]

Hi. 10.0 is nice.

Just to let you know: By now I have unfollowed every Unicode page. You can ping and ask me everything anytime, still. -DePiep (talk) 00:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, OK. BabelStone (talk) 00:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted text[edit]

What has happened to all that text deleted at 09:35, 21 June 2017?

Why was it deleted? What does OR mean in the note that it was deleted?

Was it seen as wrong information or what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.121.73 (talk) 12:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Request for UniCode Seal script[edit]

Can you develop a UniCode version of seal script? for usage on Chinese history articles. --58.187.171.100 (talk) 04:01, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Small Seal Script has been proposed for encoding by a joint group from China and Taiwan (see Proposal to encode Small Seal Script in UCS）, but it takes a long time for a large repertoire of characters such as this to be accepted for encoding, and it will not be added to the Unicode standard for at least another 2 or 3 years. When that happens then font developers can create Unicode-mapped Small Seal Script fonts, and Wikipedia articles can use Unicode Small Seal Script characters. BabelStone (talk) 10:51, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Flags[edit]

For a few months now I've been thinking about a separate article about how flags are encoded in Unicode. I have a draft started at User:Drmccreedy/sandbox (which includes all subdivision flags) and would like your feedback. Thanks. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:23, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll take a look. BabelStone (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode[edit]

Why Unicode has duplicate glyphs? --cyɾʋs ɴɵtɵɜat bʉɭagɑ!!! (Talk | Contributions) 01:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese character variants that are probably not in Unicode[edit]

Hi, I'm the same person who tweeted you variants I came across at Wikisource. I've come across more since then; should I make an on-wiki list or something for your consideration? (and secondary less important questions: how important do you think it is to 1. encode variants in Unicode; 2. transcribe variant forms accurately?) Suzukaze-c (talk) 04:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Yes it would make sense to list them somewhere on-wiki. As to whether they are candidates for encoding in Unicode, that depends on whether the variation is a unifiable difference or not, which I would have to decide on a case by case basis. We have just submitted 1,000 characters to IRG for encoding (IRGN2232), including the ones you pointed out. The next opportunity for submitting new CJK characters will not be for another 3 or 4 years. BabelStone (talk) 11:10, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. I've started at s:User:Suzukaze-c/variants, but now when looking closely, I'm not sure about noting some of them, such as 驚, 免, and 候 at s:Page:First Lessons in the Tie-chiw Dialect.pdf/20, which are only mildly unorthodox and (IMO) do not really merit new codepoints and may be attributed to stylistic choices... What do I do? Suzukaze-c (talk) 23:20, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BabelStone: Yi[edit]

Hello, Mr. Andrew, I have found that SIL renamed SIL Yi font as Nuosu SIL in 2009, and the font resource is moved to here, however in BabelStone Yi page the link still named SIL Yi, and it's redirect to ScriptSource, so please correct the link at Yi Fonts section, thanks. --Great Brightstar (talk) 08:44, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

These pages are no longer maintained, but I have updated the font link on the home page. BabelStone (talk) 12:50, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]