Dan Smith

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Daniel Steven Smith is a programmer and science fiction hobbyist who maintains a "Fantasy Fonts for Windows" website.

In 1997 he created Tengwar fonts, the first being titled "Tengwar Quenya" and "Tengwar Sindarin" (the fonts have the same keymapping, the names have nothing to do with the languages themselves). Since then he created other variants (ornamental/capital tengwar shapes etc) and Cirth fonts as well as historical Rune fonts as the ones seen in The Hobbit.

His website contains descriptions of the best known Tengwar modes and have been a usual reference point.

Creations

  • Tengwar Quenya (regular, capitals, doubled-stroked capitals, and alternate)
  • Tengwar Sindarin (regular, capitals, doubled-stroked capitals, and alternate)
  • Tengwar Noldor (regular, capitals, doubled-stroked capitals, and alternate)
  • Cirth Erebor (regular, barred and double-barred)
  • Cirth Erebor Capital (regular, doubled-stroked and pointed)
  • Germanic Rune fonts (reg, 1-bar, & 2-bars)
  • AngloSaxon Rune fonts (reg, 1-bar, & 2-bars)
  • Dwarvish Rune fonts (reg, 1-bar, & 2-bars)

Keymapping

Dan Smith had to devise a keysetting to fit the tengwar into the keyboard. He decided to divide it into rows and series as appear in the tengwar table. That way for example, the first 4 Tengwar are assigned to the leftmost row of the keyboard: 1, q, a and z correspond to the I (Tinco, Parma, Calma, Quessë). The next 4 keys correspond to the Row II and so on.

This system has been adopted by other font makers for their tengwar fonts (for example Parmaite, Formal, Cursive, Elfica and Annatar), therefore maintaining compatibility to Smith's unofficial "standard". Also, there has been some software that help transcribe a Roman text to this keymapping.

External links