Monday, May 2, 2011

Isaac Asimov in the Deseret Alphabet

I've converted Isaac Asimov's short story "Youth" to the Deseret Alphabet in my usual haphazard way.

The plain text version is available, but at the moment it isn't being shared, so if you want it you'll have to ask first.

A PDF version is available at
http://bit.ly/jNMlun. This uses a sans serif Deseret Alphabet font I made using Deja Vu as a starting point. I am trying four experiments with this font:

1) The line through the middle of the 𐐔 is removed, so it looks like a reversed Latin D.

2) The curl on 𐐏 is dropped, so it looks like a regular Latin V.

3) The curlicue inside 𐐃, 𐐍, and 𐐘 is turned into a dot, either inside the letter (for upper-case letters) or above it (for lower-case letters).

4) Some of the lower-case letters have had ascenders or descenders added.

I'm not entirely happy with the font. I think the spacing needs work and some of the lower-case letters were made by scaling upper-case letters, so they look a little thin.

As for the story, it's the only thing by Asimov in the public domain, or so Project Gutenberg thinks. I haven't proofed it yet, so it probably has misspellings galore. I'm going to revise my program to convert text to the Deseret Alphabet to try to get it to do a better job. When I do, I may or may not revise this.