Derzhanski's Computer Modern Tengwar
and Computer Roman Tengwar
First of all, these two fonts are actually the same and only one:
tiadr10. Well, even this statement is not completely right,
because Derzhanski built an entire font family, and thus you can use
Computer Modern Tengwar in various shapes and weight: bold
expanded slanted as well as medium upright or medium italic.
The so called Computer Roman Tengwar is just a particular subset of tiad*, in which only the primary letters are different. So, if I restarted the above paragraph I could write that Computer Modern Tengwar and Computer Roman Tengwar are the two faces of a large, expandable font family.
I think its design is a remarkable example of the metaness with which fonts designed with METAFONT can be enriched: from the same few source files that generate Computer Modern Tengwar with an serifed, medium weight, upright look you can obtain a sans serif, bold, slanted font or a typewriter-like one or any other font selected among a great range of combinations according to your taste. (Please, note that in order to use Computer Modern Tengwar, even in its basic form, you must have the Sauter distribution, which is usually a fundamental part of most modern TeX distributions and, in case you miss it, can be found starting from the TUG home page).
At a first and casual glance Computer Modern Tengwar has a "strange" look - and Computer Roman Tengwar is indeed more "strange". They are the result of Derzhanski's experiments with forms close enough to Computer Modern Roman (and more generally, to western latin characters) to achieve the effect you would have if, being a European of old times used to, say, Uncial or Insular Majuscula scripts, you met tengwar as written by Tolkien: look nice, quite familiar but alien at the same time because you don't understand the use of well known elements and other ones have slightly different forms.
Due to Derzhanski's
goals this font departs even more from the "standard" set App.
E: the primary letters of Computer Modern Tengwar are
still quite close to the original ones of the book (try to think how
you would write them without a calligraphic pen, adding modern-style
serifs and you are almost there... more or less), but additional
letters like lambe, alda, hwesta sindarinwa, yanta or
úre are quite different and look a lot like other
modern characters. Let's take, just for example, lambe, which
you can see on the left. What does it look like? Yes, you're right:
it's a rotated 2 (if you can't see it, try bending your head
on the left...) The other letters are left as an exercise for the
readers. ;-)
Then, what's different in Computer Roman Tengwar? As written above it's only a subset of tiad*, but with it Derzhanski added another step to the romanization process undertaken with Computer Modern Tengwar: look closely at, say, parma, quesse, thúle, formen, hwesta, óre and anna, then think at other seven symbols which you certainly see everyday and you get it.
A quick look at tehtar now: Derzhanski's modernization closely follow the words of App. E, where it's said that "The three dots, most usual in formal writing for a, were variously written in quicker styles, a form like a circumflex being often employed. [...] The curls were used for o and u", and so we really have commas for o and u and a regular circumflex accent for a. After the first reaction ("Oh my... what's this?") I'm sure you'd get used to them and understand that they were the best available solution.
Just a last thing: as I said, Computer Modern/Roman Tengwar can be used with a variety of combinations of weights and shapes. Basically, using the Sauter distribution you can easily produce the companions of Computer Modern families, but this should not keep you from playing with parameters: let your whim run and experiment! Some results would be worth the time spent on them (for an example of questionable taste, have a look at this).
Here are two separate tables with characters used for Computer Modern Tengwar and Computer Roman Tengwar, respectively.
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Comments and corrections are welcome (please, start the subject with [elvishtc] so that I will be able to filter it and read before other messages).
Last modified: Fri Apr 19 13:24:46 2002
