Ansuz

Tsukurimashou 0.7

I'm very happy to announce the release of version 0.7 of Tsukurimashou, my Japanese-language font project. That is a link to the release page for the source code package on SourceForge.JP; see also the complete list of downloadable files and the project home page. This has been almost nine months in the making, and as I said on Twitter, the yak hair is thick on the floor. Release notes below the cut.

Where do I draw the line?

It's a very common pattern in the Han writing system that a character will be made of two parts that are themselves characters, or at least elements resembling characters, placed one above the other or one next to the other. For instance, 音 (sound) can be split into 立 (stand up) above 日 (day); and 村 (village) can be split into 木 (tree) next to 寸 (inch). This kind of structure can be nested, as in 語 (language). One can do a sort of gematria with the meanings, (what exactly is the deep significance of "village = tree + inch"?) but that's not the direction I'm interested in going today. Here's the thing: in the Tsukurimashou project, these two ways of constructing characters each correspond to a piece of code that's invoked many times throughout the system, and I thought it would be interesting to look at how often the different parameter values are used.

IDSgrep 0.3

I posted version 0.3 of IDSgrep last night; follow the link to download it from SourceForge.JP. As you may recall, IDSgrep is my kanji structural-query software. Some of the ideas behind it were discussed on this Web log back in December. The general idea is that this is software to answer queries about layout and visual components of Han-script (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) characters.

The main new things in version 0.3 are support for regular expression searches; the inclusion of a bundled dictionary (based on the IDS decompositions of the CHISE project); and a "cooked" output mode.

At this point I think IDSgrep as such - the search program - is basically finished. As bug reports and practical experience accumulate, there may eventually be a 0.4 or 1.0 release, but all the features I think it needs to have are now in place and it seems to serve pretty well the original purpose for which I needed to develop it.

Tsukurimashou 0.6

At long last, I've completed the 0.6 release of the Tsukurimashou fonts (project home page). This one contains 1110 kanji, including all those taught in the Japanese school system through Grade Three. Also new in this release are experimental italics and integration with my IDSgrep structural-query software (which has its own, separate release series). Downloads: source code; precompiled fonts; demo PDF files.

On pronouns and UIs

Here is an actual quotation that I did not make up, from Microsoft's recommendations on how software should communicate with users:

Use the second person (you, your) to tell users what to do.

Here's one of my own:

Don't tell users what to do.

公安相のことは

昨日は、カナダにツイッターに面白い日でした。しかし日本語の新聞は、それくらい記事を書きないと思います。これで私は教えています。あまりよい日本語ありませんごめんなさい。

今ある政党は、カナダの国会の上に君臨します。保守党が絶対安定多数です。でもたくさんの人は、その政党が好きありません。

最近与党は、新しい法案の提案しました。警察権を上げてインタネットの盗聴を作って法案んです。対決法案ですね。ヴぃっク・テーヴスさん（Vic Toews）と言う政治家は、その法案のスポンサーをします。公安相です。月曜日に、国会に、テーヴスさんは「[critics] can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.」と言いました。もじ公安相たちを支持しなければ、児童ポルノを支持しているということになりますよ！（@_w_deeさんの翻訳の介助ありがとう）英語のことわざは、「That's when the shit hit the fan.」です。たくさんの人は怒気になりました。

Tsukurimashou 0.5

This is an archived old announcement, for a version of Tsukurimashou that is no longer the latest. You can find the latest version in the Tsukurimashou project on Sourceforge Japan.

I've released a new version of the Tsukurimashou fonts (project home page). This one contains 776 kanji, including all those taught in the Japanese school system through Grade Two and half of Grade Three. The bigger news, however, is that I've also added a set of fonts for the Korean hangul writing system. Those should now be beta quality - you should now be able to write the standard modern Korean language in its entirety. Downloads: source code; precompiled fonts; demo PDF files.

These fonts are far enough along now that I'd really like to create a bit of "buzz" around them; that's part of the sneaky plan behind my recent technical postings about my experiences building the fonts. I'm hoping that a lot of people will read those, and, especially, share them on systems like Twitter and the other one. In the new year, after I've posted a couple more (I'm aiming for weekly technical postings), I'll evaluate whether they are attracting third-party traffic and whether I want to continue them. They take up time I could be spending on writing code, but having people use the software is important too.

アルトメトスターフトクラースト

日本の旅行時、二つの事はよろしくでも出来ませんでした。ピザハットの怖く過ぎるピザを食べてとラブホテルの〝休憩〞です。今ウィニぺグにたった一つの事が出来ます。

• チーズ
• ペパロニ
• 円やかなソーセージ
• 砕けるベーコン
• ビーフの薬味
• 『畏服』

父子は

父は、この書き込みを読んで私の電話しました。そのうちに付けが回ると知りました。時限爆弾でした。

４月１７日の日記

久しぶりに日記を書きました。日本語の勉強したいので、ここによく書くようにしています。しかし難しいです。たいていな友達は日本語をよめません。読まなかったら、書き物の意味ありませんか？

Tsukurimashou 0.2

This is the announcement of a now-obsolete version. Check out the latest progress of Tsukurimashou at sourceforge.jp!

日本語のページは読んで下さい。

I've just posted the second release of the Tsukurimashou font family - now with 198 kanji, including the 80 Grade One jouyou kanji. You, too, can write like a six-year-old! Also new in this version is a fancy build system.

Download the source package (ZIP) which includes four ready-made OpenType font files, or preview it by looking at the demo PDF (which is not much changed from last version) and the kanji chart.

More commentary probable at some future date; for the moment I've already used up today's word quota writing the package documentation.

Tsukurimashou 0.1

This is the announcement of a now-obsolete version. Check out the latest progress of Tsukurimashou at sourceforge.jp!

日本語のページは読んで下さい。

I'm pleased to announce the first release of the Tsukurimashou font family. The user's manual and demo is available as a PDF file; so is the complete package in bzipped TAR and ZIP formats. Precompiled OpenType fonts, compatible with all currently-popular typesetting systems, are included in those packages for two styles (Tsukurimashou Kaku and Mincho). Other styles you'll have to compile yourself.

These fonts are released with source code under the GNU GPL version 3 with font-embedding clarification. The current version contains the full repertoire of ISO Latin-1, hiragana, and katakana; more characters are on the way.

ブリード神様のお願い

『ブリード神様のお願い』とは約束でした。遅刻でも、これは。

謙遜で天后に成った聖ブリード神様は神聖の切望の翼で上げられました。

聖都に至って
処女性以外何も着ないで
お宅の前に見えて
いたころ、
ブリード神様の事に訴える人を覚えての公約を守りました。

世界に恵みが降らさせて
今でも神業が増えさせて
います。

インバルクと言うお祭り

２月２日くらいは、インバルクと言う記念日です。ブリード神様のお祭りです。何回「Groundhog Day」と言っても、インバルクですよ。

今ブリード神様は私の氏神いません。２００９年の春に起きましたものので 氏神は戴かないで来ました。しかし今日はブリード神様のために儀式をしました。

オフィスの写真

今日はオフィスの写真を撮りました。

アパートの写真

最近ウィ二ペッグに引っ越しました。月曜日に着きました。寒いは予想通りでした。今零下２０度です。

でも、私の新しいアパートはいいです。このアパートの方がトロントに住んだアパートより広いです。下は写真です。

新年

明けましておめでとうございます。

The day a star is born

This is my last posting from the desktop machine before I take it down to pack - a little earlier than I'd first planned, but I'm trying to get my packing done with as much safety margin as possible and now that the paper deadlines are past, I don't need the main computer to be online in this location any longer. I can use my laptop for networking in the next few days before my move.

Since my last Japanese lesson on the 10th, I'm on my own as far as continuing my studies, and one thing I'm doing is translating song lyrics. Another I might do is post entries on the Japanese side of this site. Anyway, although I'm not promising to share much or any of whatever is created by my learning process - it depends very much on amount and nature of reader response - I'm going to post a song translation in this entry. It seems appropriate.

Tsukurimashou typeface demo

I added the Latin alphabet, so far only the uppercase letters, to Tsukurimashou, and this brings it to a point where I feel okay about releasing a demo PDF file, so y'all can download it and take a closer look at my handiwork.

Some things to remember:

• The main purpose of this typeface family is as a pedagogical exercise. It's the process of creation that is more important than the finished product. Hence the name.
• It's designed for the Japanese language. Typesetting modern Japanese requires having the glyphs for English too, but that doesn't mean the fonts are usable for general English-language typesetting. In particular, this is a monospace font with a choice of typesetting one character per perfectly square box, or two. That'll make it look unnaturally extended or compressed if you use it to typeset English text of more than a word or two at a time.
• All five styles shown are generated from the same source code by tweaking a few parameters, and many other styles not shown in the demo can easily be generated with very little extra work.

作りましょう！

Here's a little something I've been working on:

Status update

Just a note for long-time readers: as you can see, I've been gradually posting material copied over from the old site. I don't have a clear handle on what does or doesn't appear in the RSS feeds, nor what RSS readers (and syndicators such as Facebook and Livejournal) do with backdated entries. I'm going to post some old material as new postings, with or without notes at the top mentioning that it's reposted; other old material will be posted under its original date, and in that case it most likely won't appear in your reader. The "archive" links don't seem to work for old material, but that may be fixed at some point, and it remains accessible through the page-by-page and tag-based navigation as well as the search.

I'd like to remind you that I've also created a Japanese-language section. Items from that will not appear in the main RSS feed through which you're reading this entry; if you want to subscribe to it, you have to subscribe that page's RSS feed separately. The two share the search feature and tag cloud, but most other things are separated. I expect traffic on the Japanese side to be low but nonzero; subject matter will be determined by my language skill as it advances, but at the moment it'll be pretty elementary. Some day I'd like to be able to translate a lot of my "greatest hits" material, but my writing style in English leans heavily on technical skill in the language. It would be hard even for a native speaker to translate my work and have it still sound like my work, and it'll be a long time before I reach the level where I can do that myself.