RT @StanfordHistory: #HistoryMatters Prof. @tsmullaney + SILICON team visited @OpenAI & Letterform Archives today to discuss the history of….

Kourosh Beigpour: Keyboard is still not widely available; have approached Microsoft to add it to the system. For font design, started with open-source font and augmented it with Laki characters. Designed display font for shorter texts. #FaceInterface

Join millions who have switched to Grok.

Kourosh Beigpour: Started with Kurdish keyboard as the base model because people were familiar with it. But several modifications necessary; adapted layout to accommodate unique characters. Had to add Laki characters. Optimized for different devices. #FaceInterface

Kourosh Beigpour: In-depth conversations with elders and others in the community. Took photos of the script in use (e.g. in shops, etc.) Linguistic resources need to be developed with active involvement of people intended to use it. #FaceInterface

Kourosh Beigpour: Developing a keyboard and font for Laki. Did extensive academic and community research on the language. Historical archives for additional documentation. Historically written in Farsi script, shift to Kurdish. Special characters became images / keyboard shift.

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.

Anshuman Pandey: How to do it in Unicode? Encode every distinct syllable possibility as its new character? But people want to be able to write loanwords with unusual clusters, might need medial consonants that attach within the clusters?.#FaceInterface.

Anshuman Pandey: Pampangan has expanded alphasyllabic nature of Kulitan script. Placement of consonant letter is very important: when placed below it becomes a syllable on its own. Possibly modeled on other scripts w/ calligraphy tradition (e.g. Korean). #FaceInterface

Anshuman Pandey: Simplicity vs complexity. Handwritten form of Kulitan script is simple, but becomes complex digitally. Script change is rarely structural; inherent features retained during rotation or directional change. Philippines: lots of script diversity. #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. 🧿.

Adam Yeo: Has Script Encoding Initiative summer fellowship, trying out a Private Use Area font. Bété keyboard is now available on Google Play. Sends messages as images. Was able to share with the community earlier this month. #FaceInterface.

@tsmullaney @tsmullaney With generous support, SILICON is thrilled to launch the next era of practitioners program, the Dr. Chan Yeh Practitioners Program. Can look ahead not one cohort at a time, but 5 cohorts. CFP coming soon w/ more info on the legacy of Dr. Chan Yeh. #FaceInterface.

@tsmullaney Got to meet one individual, Dr. Chan Yeh, involved in making Chinese digital, the "Steve Jobs of Asia". Son and daughter-in-law join us at conference today. Thousands of languages in a similar position to where Chinese was, and people working to address it.

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".

Sarmad Hussain: There's a display issue, still. If you copy and paste a non-Latin URL, you can get things that look like nonsense or spam. People can't sign up with their email addresses because apps think that email is only ASCII. #FaceInterface

Sarmad Hussain: ICAN set up example domain names and created email addresses for testing to make sure they actually work in different scripts! #FaceInterface

Sarmad Hussain: Starting in 2009, expansion in 2012 - expansion in TLD space. More suffixes available. 151 internationalized domain name TLDs, covering 37 languages using 23 scripts. 91 gTLDs have been delegated, 60 ccTLDs have been delegated. #FaceInterface.

Sarmad Hussain: Linguistically diverse internet contributes to a knowledge-based society by bridging digital divide. 2005: WSIS Tunis Agenda including advancing multilingualism in domain names and email. 67% of world is online, remaining mostly in Asia and Africa. #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.

Emiyare Cyril Ikwut-Ukwa: worked on expanding examples for date/time formats. Old example generator wasn't handling decimals correctly, could get incorrect spacing in currency examples. #FaceInterface