@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

“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/...

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

Maroua Bezzaoui, Samuel Minev-Benzecry (SILICON interns) and Toral Cowieson (Unicode CEO) on "Empowering Voices: Lessons Learned and the Future of Inclusion for Digitally Disadvantaged Languages". Unicode had internship program last year with 9 students, thinking of project's future. #FaceInterface

Sarmad Hussain, Sr. Director IDN and UA Programs for ICANN. "Universal Acceptance of Multilingual Domain Names for Customer Choice and Digital Inclusion". Very used to domain names in English, but it's important to have them in other languages, too. English is 3rd in native speakers. #FaceInterface

Mark Davis, Helena Aytenfisu, Emiyare Cyril Ikwut-Ukwa (latter two undergrad SILICON interns) presenting on "Enabling languages on phones and computers". "Most people know about Unicode because of emoji." 🤣 CLDR / ICU are less well-known parts of Unicode. #FaceInterface

@tsmullaney.bsky.social welcoming Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information. Jelassi: "It is easy to recognize UNESCO people: the ones wearing a tie. People were looking at us funny. Are we bankers? No, we're the UNESCO people." #FaceInterface

John Hudson: "Language is an artifact of ways of living that have meant something." This is why language loss is a tragedy. Not all languages have the same vocabulary, people don't necessarily discuss the same thing. Not all languages are cross-translatable and that's fine. #FaceInterface

John Hudson: Classification as a "pathological byproduct" of human evolution. Is it helpful? Especially classification based on form (e.g. seriphs). Thanks to colonialism, people sometimes try to add seriphs to try to fit into Western classification. Why not classify based on use? #FaceInterface

John Hudson with a great title at #FaceInterface: "> IF 'Sanskrit' THEN". "This is a conditional presentation", on several South Asian writing systems used for major modern languages. Lots of reason to do fonts for modern languages w/o supporting Sanskrit too, but what about Sanskrit too?

Tex Texin at #FaceInterface on "Creating a fast track for digitizing languages". Digitizing a language has many stakeholders & standards. Can take decades. Language loss represents loss of cultural identity and heritage, linguistic diversity, knowledge. Communities become marginalized.

Lisa Huang at #FaceInterface on "Words of Type, and Building a Multilingual Encyclopedia for Typography". Personal story about growing up multilingually and multiculturally and how that shaped her experience. Lots of explaining / translating needed; same for typography.

Leonardo Vazquez up next at #FaceInterface on "Wikitype: Collaborative, Multilingual Classification System". Major typographic revolutions in Gutenberg, industrial revolution, digital typography, and now AI. Typography legacy: adapting existing designs ("classics") to new technologies.

Lots of Letterform Archive staff at Face/Interface today. Come say hi. If you’re not in the room, follow along on the livestream www.eventbrite.com/e/faceinterf... or the great Bluesky coverage from @stanfordsilicon.bsky.social.

Day 1 of Face/Interface2025 kicked off with a GREAT talk by @typotheque.com Bridget Chase: Typotheque Indigenous North American Type Research. Like you needed more reasons to buy their fonts. 👏👏👏

Comment from the audience: organizations "taking care of" indigenous languages don't take care of typography. This is a worldwide phenomenon. A certain kind of primacy of spoken language, leaving Latin script in the primary place for written language. #FaceInterface

Question for Bridget Chase about tool sustainability in limited-tech contexts. Answer: It's about relationship building, and frankly, the work often fails. Just building something working with a small number of people, w/o building relationships out & understanding needs, won't work. #FaceInterface

Manuel López Rocha on "Type Design for Mixe Language" presenting remotely with live Q&A. Mixe is one of 68 languages spoken in Mexico. Northeastern Oaxa, around 140k speakers, language revitalization projects including developing an orthography & written materials. #FaceInterface

Rafael Dietzch at #FaceInterface on typography of Brazilian Indigenous languages. Indigenous communities live away from big centers, in north part of Amazon. Orthographies use composed characters, not easy to do with Brazilian Portuguese keyboard, often rendered poorly.

Bridget Chase: 50% of all profits from Typotheque go to working on indigenous languages. All work done for free for those communities, but need support in external funding to scale the work out. #FaceInterface

Bridget Chase: all fonts developed through the project in collaboration with communities are given back to them for free for use in perpetuity. Developing a database of information like glyph preferences, alphabet inventory, etc. All data community approved for public consumption. #FaceInterface

Bridget Chase: updated 5 existing typefaces to not only incorporate the new characters, but take into consideration the typographic preferences that communities have for their languages. Diacritic positioning is important and can be challenging. #FaceInterface

Bridget Chase: feedback from an elder on a prototype keyboard that "there is no f in my language, but there is in Facebook". Switching keyboards back and forth was a huge hassle. But other people also had strong feelings about not having any characters outside their orthography. #FaceInterface