@tsmullaney.bsky.social Little taxes here and there (SFO landing fees, ICANN fees) enable people to get things done. This is how ICANN can run weeklong workshops to sort out non-Latin script domains, or curated exhibits at SFO airport. No one's going to argue about .99 surcharge on a plane ticket.

Discussion question: Are we preserving language or enabling communication? Are we creating a Tower of Babel? Are we ossifying language through the unchanging nature of Unicode? #FaceInterface

@tsmullaney.bsky.social wrapping up #FaceInterface. This is the third iteration of the conference: urge to create "compostable" organizations, whose work can obviate the need for it to exist. Can get drunk on the legacy of it, never really want to fully solve the problem, want people to come back.

Related to LoCoS is a preceding and influential pictographic writing system, Blissymbolics: letterformarchive.org/news/blissym... #FaceInterface

SILICON @Stanford@stanfordsilicon.bsky.social · 2y ago

Loïc Marleix: "The rediscovery of the Lovers Communication System". LoCoS is a conlang, international auxiliary language with words, verbs, grammar. "As easy as lovers are understanding each other". Pictoral system. Both meaning and sound. Designed by Yukio Ota. #FaceInterface

“Linguistic diversity is not just a technical challenge to be solved; it is a cultural treasure to be cherished” — Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information #FaceInterface #langsky

@tsmullaney.bsky.social at #FaceInterface "Privilege is the ability to move onto cooler problems", in the context of digitally-disadvantaged languages. For English we can worry about VR/AR, color fonts, etc. Most languages still need basic OCR/HTR/NLP. #MultilingualDH

Eason Lu passed around a souvenir example of Nüshu script / 3rd day letter (with some embroidery on the cover! #DHmakes #FaceInterface #MultilingualDH

Last but not least, SILICON Practitioner Sina Ahmadi on "Dolma-NLP: Developing Language Technologies for Middle Eastern Languages". Middle East is a linguistically complex place, rich diversity of languages. Only a few are officially recognized. Goal is sustainable lang tech community #FaceInterface

More on Nüshu from Lisa Huang’s 2021 Letterform Lecture: letterformarchive.org/events/view/...

Nüshu, a script created by self-educated women in a remote region of China

Nüshu is a writing system created and developed by women in the remote area of Jiangyong in the Hunan region of China. It was born out of the necessity to...

letterformarchive.org

SILICON @Stanford@stanfordsilicon.bsky.social · 2y ago

Eason Lu on "The Battle of Nüshu, or, how do we encode a performative script?" In 1982, Chinese anthropologists went to Hunan, found a script written, enchanted and embroidered by women only. Given name "Nüshu", "women's script". Lack of primary sources, earliest evidence: silver coin #FaceInterface

One thing that makes @stanfordsilicon.bsky.social’s #FaceInterface a unique conference: despite hailing from many different disciplines (engineering, design, linguistics), almost everyone here knows by heart the difference between “character” & “glyph”. (Okay, maybe also the Unicode Conference.)

Loïc Marleix: "The rediscovery of the Lovers Communication System". LoCoS is a conlang, international auxiliary language with words, verbs, grammar. "As easy as lovers are understanding each other". Pictoral system. Both meaning and sound. Designed by Yukio Ota. #FaceInterface

Anushah Hossain on "ISCII Imperialism: The Legaci of a Devanagari-Centric Character Code". ASCII imperialism: domain name system only supported ASCII until 2003. Hörby --> horby 'fornication village'. Bending of non-English languages to fit the English-centric bias. #FaceInterface

Eason Lu on "The Battle of Nüshu, or, how do we encode a performative script?" In 1982, Chinese anthropologists went to Hunan, found a script written, enchanted and embroidered by women only. Given name "Nüshu", "women's script". Lack of primary sources, earliest evidence: silver coin #FaceInterface

Kateryna Korolevtseva, "Ukrainian Cyrillic: Research-Based Typeface Inspired by Cossack Baroque Heritage". How to envision evolution of Ukrainian alphabet, w/o distortions of 1708 reform or influence of russian imperialism. For whom is russian Cyrillic "traditional"? #FaceInterface

John Berry on "Multilingual & multiscript book design". "As a book design, I'm a reader. I care about the page. With a text book, if I've done my job right no one even notices." Considering things like binding and spacing. Multiple languages (not scripts) common in Europe. #FaceInterface

Marta Bernstein on "Researching Italian Type History". Especially independent researchers, conferences are moments to talk to peers. How do you find materials to work with? We don't talk about it much. "The forgotten hundred years" between 1813 (Bodoni dies) - 1908. #FaceInterface

Min-Young Kim ending this session with "The problems type face with VR now". Through all the changes in text production, how we read is the same. AR provides a new frontier: immersive 3D spaces that need new typographic approaches. Can't develop AR tech w/o developing typography. #FaceInterface

Gerui Wang on "Algorithmic Conformity: Why do AI Generated Texts and Images Erode Cultural Diversity?" Diverse brushwork of Monet's painting are reduced to fixated forms in AI-generated paintings. Algorithmic conformity prioritizes regularity and dominant trends over nuance & context. #FaceInterface

Frida Medrano talking about "The Color Era of Variable Fonts", starting with wood type, which allowed large-scale letters to be used in posters. Use of layered ink to get additional colors. Color printing with woodcuts dates to 15c in Europe. Computers took us back to B&W. #FaceInterface

Neil Patel: "It's 2025, why are we still validating things in ASCII? Things start somewhere and they get stuck and no one things to change them." #FaceInterface

Kourosh Beigpour: Laki community was offended by some of the font / keyboard prototypes. There were examples they didn't like, until I showed them historical proof of use. Simon: Question of who initiates project. Neil: Leads come in from everywhere, random contact on LinkedIn. #FaceInterface

Question: What would you recommend as a strategy for getting a script into Unicode when no examples of the original usage survive? Simon: That's the default situation for African scripts. Proving use case with examples of use is really hard. Make a script, encourage usage. #FaceInterface

Question: how do you prioritize among all the thousands of digitally disadvantaged languages? Anshuman: fewer writing systems than languages, could prioritize by how many languages are covered by an unencoded writing system. Kourosh: The personal connection/relationship is important. #FaceInterface

Simon Charwey: "Digitizing Dangme: Advancing African Language Preservation and Accessibility through Typographic Innovation". SILICON Practitioners Program. Worked w/ director of Bureau of Ghana Languages and local universities, was connected with large network of designers #FaceInterface

Mark Jamra & Neil Patel on "Fonts and Utilities for Sunuwar". Sunuwar Welfare of Society of Nepal was collaborator in fonts/utilities for Sunuwar script. Needed *attractive* font people want to use, keyboard, app, conversion tool, translit. #FaceInterface

Kourosh Beigpour is next, with "From Script to Screen: The Digital Journey of the Laki Language". Treated as dialect of Kurdish, but some posit it's a direct descendent of Old Persian that evolved uniquely. Key part of Iranian cultural and linguistic diversity. But no keyboard/font. #FaceInterface

We're back for day 2 of #FaceInterface! Anshuman Pandey kicking it off with "Flowing in New Directions". Long history with Unicode, designated a "Unicode bulldog" many years ago, served as a mentor for SILICON interns. Encoded 30 scripts, 4 number systems, 4 emoji. 🧿

@tsmullaney.bsky.social welcoming keynote speaker Dr. Adam Yeo, who has arrived straight from the airport after his visa to the US from the Ivory Coast came through at the very last minute. Speaking on "The Future of Bété Script: Embracing Digital Inclusion". #FaceInterface

@tsmullaney.bsky.social reading comments from Stanford President Jonathan Levin, currently recovering from surgery. "The need to include the languages and cultures and people that rely on them feels more pressing than ever." Work on digital inclusion is highly interdisciplinary. #FaceInterface

@tsmullaney.bsky.social: Chinese was one of the first great stories of digital inclusion. World wrote the writing system off in 19-20c. Tiny vocal minority insisted machines are built for language, not vice versa. Most prototypes ended in failure but now Chinese is now highly digital. #FaceInterface