The core issue is people without familiarity with how non-native (to them) script can function - in the English centric world it means assuming one letter == one visual glyph, and the visual glyph won't get a different rendering depending on context. Native English speakers don't seem to really acknowledge that the English alphabet does have contextually different glyphs for the same letter: that is what capitalization is (and applies to other latin descended scripts). Of course single character = single glyph equivalence fails for many latin descended scripts 'ss' vs 'ß', 'ij' vs 'ÿ'. This is entirely ignoring accented letters which break anglo-centric "single code point == single character" equivalence (though this is more understood).
People often think text layout is "easy" because they don't consider how anything other than their common experience treats thing (the reality is there still isn't a good vertical text layout story on the web).
This is also demonstrated whenever people go "I'll handle text layout myself", because they think one key press = one character, and immediately break text entry for more than half the world.
Another example of a contextually dependent glyph in Latin script is the non-word-final form of 's' that looks sort of like an 'f' in English texts. See for example images of the hand-written US Constitution, where this comes up in the very first word "Congress", which appears to modern readers to be spelled "Congrefs".
This led to an embarrassing mistake when Google OCRed older books that contained the word "suck."
ah but you see, my conviction on one letter == one visual glyph context be damned is not hypocrisy nor is it cultural chauvinism. i for one am perfectly consistent. capitalization ought be abolished, tradition is not justification. language is about the encoding of information. capitalization is wasted code space. tradition is dead men telling you how to live. and after that, simplify the letters down into combinations of the same handful of strokes and curves. do ve really need letters vith tvice the horizontal space as the others? vhv not do avav vith all the letters that reach under the botton line? oet rid of bointu diaoonal lines too! eueru thino can and should be uniforn. doun uith the excebdions, consisdencu breuails! see hou nuch nicer this loohs. the uau it rebeats the sane feu elenets ouer and ouer uet is still leoible. it flous snooth lihe budder. uho needs all those letters anuvay?
Completely seriously I'd like to see English get rid of capitals. They're almost entirely useless and confuse learners for no benefit. On top of that kids books that use a font that makes I and l look the same annoy me too.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
from history, sometimes attributed likely incorrectly to Mark Twain
> The core issue is people without familiarity with how non-native (to them) script can function - in the English centric world it means assuming one letter == one visual glyph, and the visual glyph won't get a different rendering depending on context.
English has cursive and I think most English speakers are at least aware of cursive. We have script that is designed for print as well, though, while Arabic script does not; it is always cursive.
Some have developed non-cursive Arabic script, but it hasn’t taken off.
For instance, the Simplified Arabic Alphabet was devised by Muhammad Shakeel as an alternative way to write Arabic. It is a non-cursive alphabetical script as opposed to the traditional cursive Arabic abjad. The letter shapes are based mostly on the early Arabic Jazm script. It is not connected to or inspired by Nasri Khattar's Unified Arabic script.
Interesting. I think it probably hasn't really taken off because there's not really any reason for it to at this point. We have high resolution displays and printers and software that is powerful enough to render and input regular Arabic script just fine.
There were similar issues with typing JP/KR/CN glyphs on computers for a long time which thanks to technological progress has stopped being something that needed solving.
People often think text layout is "easy" because they don't consider how anything other than their common experience treats thing (the reality is there still isn't a good vertical text layout story on the web).
This is also demonstrated whenever people go "I'll handle text layout myself", because they think one key press = one character, and immediately break text entry for more than half the world.