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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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241–250 of 292 posts

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#241
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's visually extremely inelegant as well. Seeing a kanji character next to a single stroke katakana character in the same word is ridiculous and yet somehow commonplace. I would be more surprised that the Japanese haven't done more to clean this up if it weren't for the cultural conservatism deeply embedded in its society.

Why is it ridiculous? Why does it need to be cleaned up? I'm not sure what the problem is (I don't think I would classify you not finding it visually elegant as a problem). If anything, the Japanese writing system is very elegant in terms of information flow. In a general sense, each script has its use: kanji for content (meaning), hiragana for function (grammar), katakana for foreign words and sounds. Of course, the…

Generally writing systems with higher workloads to read/write lead to less native literacy rates due to people with learning disabilities not being able to get over the hump, not to mention less foreigners learning the language due to the higher barrier of entry.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#243
post #2

The traditional Mongolian script is notable for being written vertically, which breaks a lot of assumptions usually made in UI design. The Mongolian president's personal website is an example of designing around vertical text: https://president.mn/mng/

That website confirms one of my greatest fears about this sort of thing (which I am otherwise moderately thrilled about): that scrolljacking is going to be widely employed. And scrolljacking is always bad, I have concluded. I have not encountered a single site that scrolljacks and does it right (whatever “right” means), though I have encountered two in the last decade that were quite close, but still definitely faile…

> That website confirms one of my greatest fears about this sort of thing (which I am otherwise moderately thrilled about): that scrolljacking is going to be widely employed.

The right fix is to ensure that the major browsers (and editors) handle this properly so that there is no urge to hijack scrolling. Mongolian is not the only vertical script.

> And scrolljacking is always bad, I have concluded. I have not encountered a single site that scrolljacks and does it right

Amen.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horizontal scrolling seems to work just fine (macOS with Magic Mouse; same with trackpad). The fact that they included a workaround for those who don't have input devices with horizontal scrolling is a nice touch, yet it didn't interfere at all with my horizontal scrolling. I'd say this is a decent tradeoff.

But that’s just the thing, and why scrolljacking is so bad—I’m on a platform with excellent horizontal scrolling facilities, and it’s ruining that. Based on my experience in this space, but not their code which I haven’t seen, I guess that this will affect at least all Windows users with precise touchpad scrolling. From my perspective, it’s a terrible trade-off. User agents need to handle this better, urgently.

Sounds like you should report the bug to Microsoft.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That website confirms one of my greatest fears about this sort of thing (which I am otherwise moderately thrilled about): that scrolljacking is going to be widely employed. And scrolljacking is always bad, I have concluded. I have not encountered a single site that scrolljacks and does it right (whatever “right” means), though I have encountered two in the last decade that were quite close, but still definitely faile…

Horizontal scrolling seems to work just fine (macOS with Magic Mouse; same with trackpad). The fact that they included a workaround for those who don't have input devices with horizontal scrolling is a nice touch, yet it didn't interfere at all with my horizontal scrolling. I'd say this is a decent tradeoff.

Did support improve recently? On Mojave with a MacBook trackpad, it's super janky.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#246
post #2

The traditional Mongolian script is notable for being written vertically, which breaks a lot of assumptions usually made in UI design. The Mongolian president's personal website is an example of designing around vertical text: https://president.mn/mng/

When the page was opened I immediately tilted my head to "correct" the page, a totally unconscious reaction, much deeper than assumption.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#247
post #246
post #2

The traditional Mongolian script is notable for being written vertically, which breaks a lot of assumptions usually made in UI design. The Mongolian president's personal website is an example of designing around vertical text: https://president.mn/mng/

When the page was opened I immediately tilted my head to "correct" the page, a totally unconscious reaction, much deeper than assumption.

Me too. The menu bar on the left hand side is a big visual clue, I think.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#248
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the page was opened I immediately tilted my head to "correct" the page, a totally unconscious reaction, much deeper than assumption.

Me too. The menu bar on the left hand side is a big visual clue, I think.

I checked the English version, looks totally different, but the images are the same and I guess the content is as well. There is a link on the menu bar, the address is:

https://president.mn/en/

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those four glyphs look entirely different to each other to me, no matter which way around I orient my head... :)

My comment was about orthography, how letters are manually written; the context was learners who don't already know an alphabet. It's not uncommon to write capital-E with cursive strokes so it's a reflected or rotated 3, and lower case m and w are sometimes written similarly - so as to be very close to rotated versions of the same character.

Yes, and OP's comment was in relation to higher level computer representation of combined forms, so as interesting as your comment is, at this point it's simply picking threads for the sake of self-amusement.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#250
post #163
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds even better! Is there some example of colonialism which you think is worth preserving, to the destruction of their culture? Should Ireland stop being Irish, should Korea become a Japanese colony again, or should we reunite the USSR?

If the US had stayed a colony, it would have abolished slavery 30 years earlier than it did.[1] Hong Kong would probably be better off if it had remained a British colony. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

While I agree Hong Kong would probably be more free under the British, I think Hong Kong is not a good example. They would be best off free, not a PRC colony.
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