07/06/2023
Adapting to technological needs of cursive handwriting (Ol Usara) with principles of OL CHIKI (ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ) type design, this is a glimpse of the world's first Ol Chiki Bible (in Santali language). It has been typed as bicameral script using uppercase and lowercase letterforms of OL CHIKI. Besieds fitting more aesthetically, this innovation supports to maintain geometric harmony in typographic and calligraphic pattens of Santali type design. Additionally, it allows users to improvise freely with their calligraphic flow of pen-path. Without the invention of lowercase OL CHIKI, it would have been a very distant possibility to attain this level of accuracy.
Below is brief demonstration of my proposed solution to visual paradox observed commonly between handwritten manuscripts and printable letterforms of OL CHIKI (ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ). This resolves previously found counter-intuitive confusion of how to hand-write curves in contrast to printing or on-screen typing of its unicameral fonts. Users who have been so far, acquainted with only printed letter-designs of OL CHIKI, have been facing difficulties in reading its cursive handwritten documents due to various complexities.
More importantly, handwritten ligatures for ᱜᱽ, ᱡᱽ, ᱫᱽ, and ᱵᱽ can now be represented as single glyphs in lowercase OL CHIKI. Parallelly, it is adhering to expressing joined calligraphic curves practiced in speed-writing Ol Usara.
As the ligature ᱷ has previously been serving the typographic needs of expressing ᱦᱽ together in a single glyph, my proposals of double-case are fulfilling the "type" requirements of jointly writing ᱜ,ᱡ, ᱫ, and ᱵ with ᱽ(Ohod) in cursive handwriting.
Answering the unmet needs of ascenders and descenders overshooting lower and upper height limits, that is commonly found in handwritten manuscripts, this technology augments OL CHIKI from unicameral script to a bicameral script (where Upper-case & lower-case are present).
This expansion will immensely benefit the present users of OL CHIKI as well as increase computational compatibility with other scripts and writing systems. It also eases case-variant transliteration in multilingual formats for data processable in computational principle of "What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)". It may serve as an immensely useful tool to save handwriting from extinction (specifically, it will ensure survival of handwriting Ol Usara in the future).
For those who are getting acquainted with "Santali":
Indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, Santali is considered to be an ancient language presently being spoken by about ten million people.
Why was Bible referred for this experimentation?
Bible's text is a widely available literature in multilingual format and can be used as a refence to decode manuscripts of various communities. This also aligns with the vision of "Rosetta project" for saving world's languages and scripts. The "Rosetta project" offers contemporary solutions to preserving graphical representation of languages as well as challenges that may arise in future. It may be seen as expansion of the analogous "Rosetta stone". For more on Rosetta stone, please refer this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
Stay tuned for summary of more exciting scientific and computational linguistics breakthroughs on Santali!
The Santali translation of Bible's first chapter of Genesis from the Old Testament in Ol Chiki may also be referred in following link
https://www.behance.net/gallery/110784423/CREATIVE-WORKS-LOGO-BRAND-IDENTITY-ILLUSTRATIONS
