With the Ancient Maya App’s Write Feature you can easily create glyph blocks. But if you create enough text, you’ll run into the “missing glyph” problem. There are a couple phonemes for which we don’t have ancient glyphs. In some cases it is for ancient phonemes where we haven’t identified ancient glyphs. In other cases it is caused by modern Mayan words that incorporate Spanish phonemes. I asked my friend Memo how the Ancient Maya App might deal with these sounds. Memo, who is an expert epigrapher, had already thought about the problem and proposed a solution. He created affix and main phonetic glyph for ch’e, ch’i, ch’u, t’a, t’e, t’i, and xe.
This is huge! It’s a beautiful solution to the “missing glyph” problem.
To seamlessly integrate Memo’s missing glyphs they must closely match the visual style of the existing glyphs in the “Write” feature which are all from Tokovinine. Essentially, the app needs to combine both glyph sets to make a new font. Memo’s glyphs were drawn with a thinner pen than Tokovinine’s. Mixing Memo’s “neoglyph” with Tokovinine’s them would create glyph blocks that looked slightly off. Before the merge, I think Memo’s glyphs need to be redraw with a wider pen. While doing these we might as well redraw them at the same size Tokovinine’s. This will allow the app the best looking glyph blocks.
Should the app two “Write” modes? The “ancient mode” would only use known ancient phonetic glyphs. The “modern mode” would extend the ancient phonetic glyphs with Memo’s extension. The “modern mode” might also incorporate features various writing systems found useful when used with moveable type or computer screens. This includes punctuation characters, multiple font styles, etc. What do you think?