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50 lines
3.0 KiB
HTML
50 lines
3.0 KiB
HTML
<p><strong>This font requires a web browser with Graphite support enabled,
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such as Firefox 11+, to display correctly.
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<a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_firefox">
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Learn how to enable Graphite in Firefox from SIL</a>.</strong></p>
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<p>Balinese is a language of the Austronesian family of languages, ostensibly
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spoken by about three million people on the island of Bali, Indonesia, and
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among some Balinese immigrant communities on other Indonesian islands
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(although latest reports from the government of Bali suggest that actual
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number of Balinese speakers is now closer to 1 million.)</p>
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<p>Balinese script, or Aksara Bali, is an abugida that was derived from the
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Old Kawi script, which ultimately derived from the Brahmi script, the root of
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all the Indic and Southeast Asian scripts. The earliest known inscriptions
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were from the 11th century AD. An abugida, also known as an alphasyllabary, is
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a segmental writing system in which consonant vowel sequences are written as a
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unit. In the case of Balinese, each character is compromised of a consonant
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along with the vowel “a.”</p>
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<p>Although Balinese script is taught to all Balinese children in grammar
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school, the use of Balinese script has been largely superseded by Latin
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script, due to the influx of Indonesian, the national language, and, as of
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late, the increasing use of electronic communication for which Balinese script
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has been problematic.</p>
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<p>In 1988, I Made Suatjana first attempted to create a font for Aksara Bali
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using the DOS based ChiWriter. There was a lot of excitement about this
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effort, but the font was difficult to use and the letters weren't as rounded
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and connected as the writing system required. In 1996, I Made Suatjana
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improved the shape of the letters by creating a Windows based font, called
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Bali Simbar. The font was better shaped, although it was still quite difficult
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to use because of the idiosyncrasies of Aksara Bali, which has letters
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changing shape and moving above or below the line depending on where they
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occur relative to other characters.</p>
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<p>In 2005 a seminar was held for the purpose of entering Aksara Bali into
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Unicode and ISO 10646, sponsored by the Balinese Government Department of
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Culture and Yayasan Bali Galang, a foundation promoting the use of Askara Bali
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(Balinese script) under the direction of Donny Harimurti and his sons Bemby
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Bantara Narendra and Dendy Narendra. The following year, Balinese script was
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entered into Unicode, although it was categorized as "still having some
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difficulties."</p>
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<p>There are now two fonts available for Aksara Bali: Bali Simbar Dwijendra,
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developed by I Made Suatjana written in Visual Basic which uses the program
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Keyman to manipulate the keyboard for Microsoft Word; and Bali Galang Smart
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Font, developed by Donny Harimurti and his sons, which can only be used with
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applications which are integrated with the Graphite engine (for example,
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Firefox with Graphite enabled, and Open Office). We are grateful to the
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engineers at Google for allowing Aksara Bali to be used as a web font.</p> |