Installation of TTF-Files (Windows):
1. Open the Control Panel and double click the "Fonts" icon -
or use the Explorer and go to the WINDOWS\FONTS folder (if it is visible).
2. Check whether there are old versions of "D'ni Script" installed on your system.
If there are, delete them.
3. Control Panel: Open the "File" menu and click on "Install new font...".
Then enter the location of the unzipped D'NI_???.TTF file and click "OK".
Explorer: Just copy or move the file D'NI_???.TTF to the WINDOWS\FONTS folder.
4. Reload this Readme.
5. Well, read the Readme!
Contents:
This font is copyright © Colin Arenz (teKis) and Sebastian Ochs (jehon), 1998-2000 with all rights reserved.
All things relating to D'ni, Myst and Riven, including these letters and symbols, were created by Cyan and are a trademark of Cyan Inc. 1993-1999.
All other mentioned brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and are provided here solely in an informational manner.Although we have devoted many hours to the completion of this font we release it as Freeware.
Hence, you must not sell this font or charge for use of it or make profit with it in any other way.You may use and distribute it privately and on non-commercial websites, but please include this Readme and send me a mail with your URL.
The font and this Readme must not be modified without written permission from us.Although you needn't contact us if you decide to use the font, we appreciate any kind of feedback.
At the beginning of 1998 I, Sebastian Ochs, finally got a German copy of the Book of Ti'ana. When I saw Aitrus' map, my question whether the D'ni writings found in Riven were mere decoration was answered with a clear "no". At first I could hardly believe that Cyan had invented a new language, but then I wanted to be able to read and understand it. At that time I did not have access to the Internet, so a friend of mine who had one helped me out. We found some interesting material, including this very good D'ni script font from someone called Colin Arenz.
For my studies I archived every sample of D'ni text I could find, using Colin's font to write it down. However, as time passed, I noticed that there were some inaccuracies in the font and things that could be improved. Eventually I got an Internet access, and I contacted Colin (well, actually he contacted me, but that's another story ;-). He allowed me to change his font, I grabbed a font editor program and started to work. At the end, I had created a new font, but my work based heavily on Colin's. In fact I would have never made D'ni Script Standard Version 2 without his font.I would like to thank Colin for his support, and of course Cyan for everything that is D'ni and for being the great company they are.
The different versions of D'ni Script:
The D'ni language uses a different alphabet but since most people can't read the D'ni characters fluently, and since you can't use this wonderful font everywhere (for example in plain text E-mails), a method of representing the D'ni characters with our Latin letters must be chosen. This is called "transliteration" (or "transcription").
Cyan (RAWA) chose to transliterate the characters according to their sound for English speaking people (well, all Cyantists are Americans and should therefore speak English ;-). But that's the big problem!
First, this way of transliteration is not international. Cyan's non English speaking fans (I am one, so please excuse my bad English ;-) are disadvantaged!
Second, English has a horrible orthography (sorry, but it's the truth!). During the course of time, the pronunciation of English changed, whereas the spelling of the written language did not. Here's a nice quote from Bernard Shaw which illustrates the problem:
"If you take the 'gh' of 'enough', the 'o' of 'women' and the 'ti' of 'nation', you can write 'fish' like 'ghoti'."
That's why many D'ni characters, especially the vowels, must be transliterated to two Latin/English letters, to avoid confusion. So we transliterate the D'ni a to "ah" instead of "a", to make sure that the clean a sound as in "far" is meant, and not the "a" sound as in "about, any, all, lame," etc. But these extra "h"s are quite nasty, you can easily forget them, even Cyan sometimes omits them, because "it looks better" (examples: garo/gahro, Yavo/Yahvo...).
As a result, the transliteration gets ambivalent and confusing: "Ah'Gaherihs" could mean a'gaeris or a'gqherIhs or something else. And don't you think that "ahbtseeets" looks funny?That's why Linguists Guildmaster Josef Riedl and Kamza Madfuun (Verbmaster) have developed "The New D'ni Transcription Standard". In this standard, every D'ni character is assigned to one single Latin letter. Diacritics (those little points and lines over/under some letters) have to be used, but that is common practice in professional transliteration.
I support the New Standard, so I created "D'ni Script LM" (D'NI_SLM.TTF). It contains the same D'ni symbols as D'ni Script Standard (except for the anomalous Z and L), however, the mapping is that of the New Standard.D'ni Script Standard:
If you just want to type some D'ni letters, print them out or use them in a graphics program, D'ni Script Standard is probably your choice, because you can easily type the letters with the usual D'ni font mapping ("S" is S, "I" is I, etc.).D'ni Script LM:
If you want to put D'ni text on your web page, or if you would like to send D'ni writings via plain text E-mail, you better use D'ni Script LM. Because you can simply copy a New Standard transliteration into your word processing program, select "D'ni Script LM" as font and you'll get the exact D'ni letters (erm, well, except for the numbers, but there really aren't many numbers in the known D'ni texts).
Note: The D'ni letters of D'ni Script LM are case insensitive! Moreover, regardless wheter you write á, à, â, or Á, À, Â, you'll get the letter I!
Help wanted!
- Perhaps someone could write a small program for Windows, which can convert texts between the New Standard mapping and the "normal" D'ni Script mapping? If there's nobody, I could write one for DOS ;-).
- The files are in the Microsoft Windows TrueTypeFont file format. I have included Apple Unicode Mappings, however, I am completely unfamiliar with Apple computers, so I do not know whether they will work on them. If you are an Apple user, please contact me and tell me!
Did I forget something? Oh yes!
D'ni Script Angular:
Hehe, just a joke!
Including the anomalous Z (Z) which can be ssen in Riven's school house
The D'ni Alphabet
v t s j y k a f i e r m T d h o c w u x l q z n The Derivatives
' b S g K I p E A D O U
and the non-standard L (L) which can be found on Gehn's ink pot (the beetle) or Book of Atrus paperback.
The Numbers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ) ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( [ ] { } \ Including the special twenty-five character | .
The Colors ä Ä ö Ö ü Ü red orange yellow green blue violet D'ni period: .
D'ni hyphen/dash: -
Character - Sound - Mapped to - Linguistic Mappingv "v" as in "very" v v
b "b" as in"bit" b b
t "t" as in "ten" t t
s "s" as in "see" s s
S "sh" as in "shoe" S š (ALT+0154, HTML š)
j "j" as in "jam" (voiced) j j
g "g" as in "good" v g
y "y" as in "yes" y y
k "kh" as ch in Scottish "loch" or German "doch" k x
K "k" as in "key" K k
a "ah" as in "father" a a
I "i" as in "ice" I á (HTML á)
f "f" as in "feel" f f
p "p" as in "put" p p
i "ih" as in "sit" (short) i i
E "ee" as in "beer" (long) E í (HTML í)
e "eh" as in "bet" e e
A "ay" as in "may" A é (HTML é)
r "r" as in "riven" r r
m "m" as in "man" m m
T "th" as in "think" (unvoiced) T þ (ALT+0254, HTML þ)
d "dh" as th in "the" (voiced) d ð (ALT+0240, HTML ð)
D "d" as in "do" D d
h "h" as in "hold" h h
o "oh" as in "boat" o o
O "oy" as in "toy" O ó (HTML ó)
c "ch" as in "change" (unvoiced) c ç (ALT+0231, HTML ç)
w "w" as in "well" w w
u "uh" as in ? ("e" as in "the") u u
U "oo" as in "boot" U ú (HTML ú)
x "ts" as in "tsetse" x or X c
l "l" as in "live" l l
L nonstandard "l" L n/a
q "a" as in "cat" q or Y æ (ALT+0230, HTML æ)
z "z" as in "zoo" (voiced) z z
Z incorrect z Z n/a
n "n" as in "no" n n0 rUn (zero) 0 or " : "
1 fa (one) 1
2 brE (two) 2
3 sen (three) 3
4 tor (four) 4
5 vat (five) 5
6 vagafa (six) 6
7 vagabrE (seven) 7
8 vagasen (eight) 8
9 vagator (nine) 9
) nAvU (ten) SHIFT+0 " ) "
! nAgafa (eleven) SHIFT+1 " ! "
@ nAgabrE (twelve) SHIFT+2 " @ "
# nAgasen (thirteen) SHIFT+3 " # "
$ nAgator (fourteen) SHIFT+4 " $ " or " £ "
% hEbor (fifteen) SHIFT+5 " % "
^ hEgafa (sixteen) SHIFT+6 " ^ "
& hEgabrE (seventeen) SHIFT+7 " & "
* hEgasen (eighteen) SHIFT+8 " * "
( hEgator (nineteen) SHIFT+9 " ( "
[ riS (twenty) [
] rigafa (twenty-one) ]
{ rigabrE (twenty-two) {
} rigasen (twenty-three) }
\ rigator (twenty-four) \
| fasE (twenty-five) | or " ; "ä (red) " ä " ALT+0228, HTML ä
Ä (orange) " Ä " ALT+0196, HTML Ä
ö (yellow) " ö " ALT+0246, HTML ö
Ö (green) " Ö " ALT+0214, HTML Ö
ü (blue) " ü " ALT+0252, HTML ü
Ü (violet) " Ü " ALT+0220, HTML Ü' (apostrophe) ' (any apostrophe)
. (period) .
- (hyphen/dash) - (any dash/hyphen) or ~ (tilde, only Linguistic Mapping)
CIf you type an unmapped character you'll get a Moiety Dagger. C
Limitations and known deviations from Cyan's font:
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- The smallest readable font size on screen should be 10. Recommended minimum size is 14.
- Because of the symbols' close connection they may look a bit bad on screen, but when printed or used in a graphics program, they look great.
- You'll need a space character beetween the leading period and some letters.
- Because of this, the space character is pretty tight and you'll probably need two to separate words clearly.
- The spacing of the apostrophe character is a bit tighter than in Cyan's font.
- The files are in the Microsoft Windows TrueTypeFont file format. I am completely unfamiliar with Apple computers, so I do not know whether they can be used with them.
This font was created by Colin Arenz (teKis), 1998 with help from the following:
- The Cyan Website
- "From Myst to Riven"
- Lee Lanthier
- Richard "RAWA" Watson
Sebastian Ochs (jehon) enhanced and refined the complete font in October 1999 and again in February/March 2000 so that it is almost identical to Cyan's font, with help from the following:
- Colin Arenz
- "From Myst to Riven"
- Richard "RAWA" Watson's http://cho.cyan.com/RAWA/JPGS/DEConvert.jpg
[Back to Contents]
If there is an update, you may find it at the site of jehon or perhaps at the site of teKis.I, Sebastian, am now responsible for this font, so if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, criticism, praise or problems (heaven forbid!) regarding the font, don't hesitate to contact me:
Sebastian Ochs: .selema b'jehon
Colin Arenz: .selema b'teKis
Links:
Cyan, the creators of Myst, Riven and D'ni.
[Back to Contents]
Sample text 1 (D'ni Script Standard):
Here is the corrected (I hope ;-) version of Atrus' prayer from the Myst 1996 calendar
(journal entry for November, thanks to Karen Bahnsen!):
yavo
. KoDokantor
femagentEom
KoDoKanraD Kam lorag
Kenen b’Ken Sin b- bAk
b’totE ranal xo marn-
tavom . Dopracizen
b’zU do mukon b’tArUS
lemarnem met miSo xav
te . gaT t’do Kenen -
dozoneS tArU t’baStE
vat- kagem gaT
b’tAgan kezU . park
b’Sem . Kam Sin barta
t’gestO rilnar b’fasE
Domado t’paraTom
gahUxATom . votar
a’Sem keKamrov Kenem
. g’cev a’Sem keKam
l’artaem ga Kam boar-
taem. Ken cevet On
mor’ok’mor KoKenen
remesfet b’vAnu
t’kOtag zu xoSem
g’bortaom
Sample text 2 (D'ni Script LM):
Here is a transcription of the first page of Gehn's journal from the Riven Soundtrack booklet.
It is written in D'ni Script Linguistic Mapping, so if you mark the text, copy and paste it into a word processing program, you'll get Latin letters with diacritics, which represent the pronunciation.
. lómat lekenít ðénótí para
trešíga reendétantí lešuféít
úlbaó fesev 98 kodobíra retíju
kag . ril líam lekenen húsaté
b’fasí ox een ox mištatavó met
fam gæta çileš brevog woca ox
r’aça te a sev mot. xó regedí kæt kolkenen remúší
greúnan çeto ox rezíwé ril
bodolpépíl . kokenen revog
miro ox revádu mot kopúgoen
b’ken erþ nudatav b’riš be erþ
tíju tígal kera. vola tesot prin faec tígtantí
kodotígít rilte rearíutav carú
címaal konícavéít tænuþ
iglarno temo kokílaít kæt erþ
gartavotí xa treaça . brí pam
sen kotænuít canoš trefaðo. reyípé kolænít me gormot
tetemo kojagaen aríutav fúru
lómat relúpatí mot komarentít
xapo kokenít peké b’riš be motí
Myst ® , Riven ® and all things D'ni ® are registered trademarks of Cyan, Inc.
©1993-1999 Cyan, Inc.
.Sora Kenena t'SemtEHTML by Sebastian
