Scripts for Wesnoth

[Cloud]

I like the idea the Saurian's use base 14, imagine the fun one could have with a campaign.

Why use a rope as a measurement, why not something more accessable like a tail? All the other's relate to a body part. (Perhaps you could go Claw (singular) - Foot - Hand - Tail. 3 Claws to a Foot, 4 Claws to a Hand. 2 Feet and 2 Hands (14 Claws) to a Tail or something along those lines?)

[kitty]

I like the idea the Saurian's use base 14, imagine the fun one could have with a campaign.

Why use a rope as a measurement, why not something more accessable like a tail? All the other's relate to a body part. (Perhaps you could go Claw (singular) - Foot - Hand - Tail. 3 Claws to a Foot, 4 Claws to a Hand. 2 Feet and 2 Hands (14 Claws) to a Tail or something along those lines?)

That sound's nice! I'll incorporate that in the next version!

[LemonTea]

I'd imagine if the Saurians had astronomical knowledge and made celestial observations/measurements they'd have a good grasp of trigonometry, which would also require circular geometry.

The degree is an arbitrarily invented unit for measuring angles so I'd imagine the Saurians won't be using it. The radian is a universal concept so they might be using something based off that.

But maybe I'm basing this off our world too much. Maybe in Wesnoth the earth is flat and sun dies every dusk to be reborn the next dawn. Works for me

EDIT: I felt bored and decided to create some Saurian trigonometry and decimal places, keeping within kitty's style, of course. Enjoy!

EDIT 2: Whoops there's a mistake in the first example. The half curvy-line in the second decimal place should be replaced with two dots.

[furioso]

I've managed to install Fontforge (which took a while since I installed some extra libraries too) and it is working nicely, including the kerning feature. I've started out on the letters, tracing from Kitty's original image since it's easier than editing the current font. I'm doing an 'unconnected' version first, as per Kitty's first example, since that doesn't need any ligatures.
Unfortunately, since I have fairly limited resources at the moment, progress will be slow; I shall try to finish the font over the next few days. The first release should be sometime next week.
One thing which isn't too hard to implement is the font information. Esr will know what license/copyright information should be used - but the name of the font is an open decision. Any suggestions?

[kitty]

A new edition of the saurian numerals, now with a couple more symbols, the measurement system Cloud proposed and Quadridecimals and Trigonometry following Lemon Tea's suggestion.


Lemon Tea: That's so cool! Many thanks! That fits perfectly and your symbols for sin, cos and the bracket work graphically nice as well.
I don't think that you model it too much after our world - that's the great thing about mathematics, no matter how the planet is shaped a circle is still a circle with the constant relation between perimeter and diameter etc.
I've included your suggestion pretty much without any changes. For a system based on the radiant I assuemed they'd also know of the constant pi and made a symbol, for it. I'd define the radiant as π/4 and the circle as 8 rad (instead of our ~57°), since degrees are arbitrary and all that. And because there is always room for three decimals in the boxes I use three instead of only two as you did. For the notation of the decimals I'd suggest using multiplications instead of fractions because that's the way we are doing it with the natural numbers, to keep things consistent overally.

Furioso: That sounds good! For the name I'd simply go with Steelhand or wesnothian Steelhand.

[AI]

I've calculated some fitting approximations of pi for them.
3.2 (in quadridecimal, 3 + 2/14, better known as 22/7 or 3 1/7 to humans) is a good one (error less than .04%)
after that one it takes a while to find a value where the leading omitted digits are close to zero.
Further good ones are 3.1da76 and 3.1da75b.

Code: Select all

             3.14159265358979323844                 (20 decimals should be sufficient)
3 * 14^0    + .14159265358979323844
1 * 14^(-1) + .07016408216122180987                 (2 * 14^(-1) - .00126448926734961870)  22/7
13* 14^(-2) + .00383755154897691194
10* 14^(-3) + .00019323668017224724
7 * 14^(-4) + .00001102093673201401
5 * 14^(-5) + .00000172421512792051                 (6 * 14^(-5) - .00000013512919289819)  1689624/14^5
12* 14^(-6) + .00000013049142436171                 (13* 14^(-6) - .00000000231888426819)  7529536/14^6

[kitty]

heh - thanks ai!


---
And something new - since I'm working on portraits for the merpeople now, I thought it would be nice to have some fitting script for them, too. Could be handy for decorating some of the armours or something like that.
Two forms; one original, rough, very geometrical and straight like in the beginnings of writing and one "evolved" calligraphic brush written variant of it. Both using an alphabet of consonants with the vowels as kind of diacritical marks which are written next to the consonant they belong to.

Any thoughts?

[Exasperation]

I think you're looking at approximations of pi the wrong way. If you look at the early history of approximations to pi, they tend to come around as convergents to the continued fractional representation of pi (this mostly has to do with the relationship between geometric methods of approximation and the continued fractional representation). The first few convergents are 3, 22/7, 333/106, and 355/113. These are all relatively easy to reach starting from a geometric model of mathematics (in our history they were all discovered independently multiple times, and each one of these was discovered before 500 a.d. - mostly long before). Additionally, 355/113 is extremely accurate; 355/113 - pi is around .00000027! If we're assuming that the saurians came to their approximations of pi by geometric methods rather than algebraic methods, these are the approximations they would have reached first, as a consequence of the methods they would have been using.

[thespaceinvader]

When I looked at those latest ones, Kitty, my first though was 'dwarves' - they seem a little too angular for merpeople. I'd have expect something more flowing. But then, what type of writing would people use who developed underwater? Something scratched into something, cos ink wouldn't work... SO on second thought, it works =) The second version in particular is nice, the characters flow together well when pictured vertically.

[melinath]

And I do have plans for an additional dwarvish alphabet - drakish and saurian just will come first.

Theoretically, we don't need another futhark... the runes were used in Old Norse for ordinary communication between laypeople, in Sweden as late as 1500 AD. Things like, "Havard is sending Gudny God's regards and his friendship. Now it's my intention to make you an offer of marriage, provided that you don't prefer Kolbein. Think over the matter and let me know your will." These were never used with paper, but rather carved into wooden runesticks or into stone.

On the other hand, in southern Germanic areas, they were only ever used for magical/inscriptive purposes (as far as there is evidence and assuming I'm not remembering terribly wrong) and died out slowly at the same time the Latin alphabet was being used by scholars.

Also, I would propose that dwarves are less likely to have paper than some other races, especially with so much stone lying around to carve. If they did have another alphabet, it might not be calligraphy...

And on another note: I really like the stuff you're making! Awesome! The only thing that bothers me a bit is that mermen would have trouble with ink underneath water, so though the calligraphy version looks really cool, I can't think when they would use it. Do we have any idea how they communicate underwater? You can't really speak...

[thespaceinvader]

One presumesthat they vocalise rather like dolphins and whales do - you make vibrations without passing air out of your mouth, and they transmit into the water. One presumes the calligraphic version is used when they communicate on land, or when people from the land communicate with them in Mer.

[AI]

I think you're looking at approximations of pi the wrong way. If you look at the early history of approximations to pi, they tend to come around as convergents to the continued fractional representation of pi (this mostly has to do with the relationship between geometric methods of approximation and the continued fractional representation).

True, I just wanted to see what effects base 14 would have on their understanding of these things. Fractions are universal, but people tend to prefer fractions they can easily calculate with. 3.2 (base 14) is sufficiently accurate for most purposes and easy to calculate with.

[melinath]

One presumesthat they vocalise rather like dolphins and whales do - you make vibrations without passing air out of your mouth, and they transmit into the water. One presumes the calligraphic version is used when they communicate on land, or when people from the land communicate with them in Mer.

...

One presumes that a species that vocalizes like dolphins and whales would first have to learn how to even speak with sentient land beings at all. A system of writing for such a species would not contain vowels and consonants, and the writing they use for writing to communicate with land creatures would likely be, one presumes, whichever script they happened to learn from whoever they happen to first meet.

There would be a concurrent existence of two scripts, one for mer-communication, one for land-communication. The mer-communication script, transcribing the whale-like sounds, would be utterly useless for communicating with land-people since none of them know or speak the language and it is completely foreign to them. The land-communication script would transcribe the land sounds, and could eventually be modified to be more mer-friendly/mer-aesthetic, but it would be utterly useless for transcribing the mer language.

[thespaceinvader]

This probably explains the use of vowels as diacritical marks rather than explicit letters. And it's one of those things it's best not to think about too hard - it's explicitly canon that they can communicate with people on land, so we have to work with that, even if the realist within us rankles abotu the idea. A wixzard did it. They're magic

[melinath]

I don't even bother trying to explain to myself why a species would evolve into merfolk. That would be pointless. However, they exist in Wesnoth, and the question is: how can we realistically depict them? It could add an interesting level if they had a language built like whale song and a way to transcribe it that is completely foreign to us. Or even an alphabet, but referencing tone and length instead of consonants and vowels.