Innovations in Devanagari Typesetting (Degree System)
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Credits
- Professor Fiona Ross 2 Author
- Thomas Graham Designer
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When Europeans first brought metal type to India, they tried to represent Devangari script characters with singular metal letterforms, the way that the Latin alphabet had been represented. However, this proved incredibly inefficient for Devangari, as it didn't consider or allow for the fact that Devangari characters are formed differently than latin ones.
In 1836, Thomas Graham designed a new version of the Devangari typeface, this time expanding the phalā typesetting system to the degree system, where there is room for diacritics above and below a base character.
Notably, Graham's new version of Devangari had more input from native Indians than previous versions of Devangari, as his version was likely influenced by previous Marathi printing. This resulted in a typeface that was more successful at accurately representing the Devangari script for those who actually used it.
