[ILUG] Ogham on linux

[Michael Watterson]

Caolan McNamara wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 15:23 +0100, Michael Watterson wrote:
>   
>> David Golden wrote:
>>     
>>> Hey. Cool.  I installed a unicode font with the ogham characters
>>> defined, set my xkb keymap to "ie(ogham)" (KDE has a GUI for this, 
>>> presumably GNOME does too), and I can type in ogham with AltGr+letter
>>> in unicode apps...
>>>
>>> ᚛ ᚁᚂᚃᚄᚅ ᚆᚇᚈᚉᚊ ᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏ ᚐᚑᚒᚓᚔ ᚕᚖᚗᚘᚙ ᚚ ᚜
>>>
>>> keymap of the above* (though N.B. not the Ogham letter's sound
>>> value in all cases) is AltGr+
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> /BLFSN/HDTCQ/MGVZR/AOUEI/WKJYX/P/<
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> * Assuming I or the list server didn't screw up the encoding of 
>>> this mail - n.b. if you see a row of square boxes in your unicode 
>>> mail reader (most GUI ones these days), I mightn't have messed up
>>> the encoding, you just mightn't have a font with ogham in it.
>>>  
>>>   
>>>       
>> Works in IRC but not Skype, oddly.
>>
>> Normally though it would be vertical.
>>     
>
> Well, typical examples of ogham are carved into stone pillars, so for a
> long sequence of text while it would indeed start off vertically from
> the bottom left moving upwards, it would be carved horizontally across
> the top before vertically downwards on the next edge, so the
> directionality of the script seems fairly loose.
>
> Some of the older Greek scripts were boustrophedon which had a similar
> left to right, and then right to left on alternating lines concept.
> Which is sort of a vaguely related idea. I don't think there are any
> living boustrophedon scripts, fairly certain we didn't add any support
> for it in OOo though we considered it for a micro-second.
>
>
>   
Interesting. Most scripts originally Right to Left. Possibly because 
carving was easier or because lefthanddedness more so. (Stoneage, seems 
to be majority Lefthanded).
The Greeks got writing from the Phoenicians and seem from pottery 
examples if memory serves me to have changed over around 750BC (from 
mainly R->L to mainly L->R). Hebrew archaic script is like Phoencian. 
(where Taff is an X symbol). Roman derived from Greek. So our Alef Bet  
is amazingly not so far from 3000 year old Phoencian.  I've never quite 
understood where Ogham and Viking runes originated as they seem 
curiously to be simply different symbols for the same Alphabet system. 
(Arabic also derived from Phoenican). There is even a non-iconic 
Eqyptian script that has similar structure.

The Phoenicians did trade as far as Ireland in ancient times though.

The Celtic Park & Gardens near Curraghchase in Limerick has fake ogham 
stones that look done with an Angle Grinder.

-- 
Mike