This Readme uses the fonts D'ni Script Standard and D'ni Script LM, so please first install the *.ttf files.

Installation of TTF-Files (Windows):

1. Open the Control Panel and double click the "Fonts" icon, or use 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 Dni_Script.ttf and Dni_Script_LM.ttf files and click "OK".
Explorer: Just copy or move the file Dni_Script.ttf and Dni_Script_LM.ttf to the WINDOWS\FONTS folder.
4. Reload this Readme.
5. Well, read the Readme!



Sora  b'biv
-D'nE  sKript  2 . 3
D'ni Script Version 2.3 Readme
Last Update: 18.4.2003



Contents:



Legal Info:

This font is copyright © Colin Arenz (teKis) and Sebastian Ochs (jehon), 1998-2002 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 are releasing 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 an e-mail with your URL.
The font and this Readme must not be modified without written permission from us.

Although you need not contact us, if you decide to use the font, we appreciate any kind of feedback.
 

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Introduction:

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 a connection 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 Internet access and I contacted Colin (actually, he contacted me, but that's another story ;-). He allowed me to change his font, so I grabbed a font editor program and started to work. At the end, I had created a new font, but my work was based heavily on Colin's initial effort. 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.
 

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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 sound, as in "far" is meant, and not the "a" sound as in "about, any, lame" etc. But these extra "h"s are quite nasty. You can easily forget them, and 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 the words "behlehtsahrah" and "ahbtseeehts" look funny?

That's why Linguist 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 a 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" (Dni_Script_LM.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. Since you can simply copy a New Standard transliteration into your word processing program, select "D'ni Script LM" as your 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 1:  The D'ni letters of D'ni Script LM are case insensitive! Moreover, regardless whether you write á, à, â, or Á, À, Â, you'll get the letter  I!
Note 2:  Josef Riedl wrote a nice program which is able to convert D'ni texts between the different transliteration methods. You can download it from his site.
 
 

Important note:

Link:  The New D'ni Transcription Standard web page

 
Did I forget something? Oh yes!
D'ni Script Angular:
Hehe, just a joke!
 

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Characters:

 
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
 
 
 
 
 
D'ni Script Standard includes the anomalous Z (Z) which can be seen in Riven's school house
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
)
!
@
#
$
%
^
&
*
(
[
]
{
}
\

Plus the special character for twenty-five, |  .
 
 
 
The Colors
ä
Ä
ö
Ö
ü
Ü
red
orange
yellow
green
blue
violet

 
 
 
The Punctuation
'
.
-
apostrophe
period
dash/hyphen

 

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Mapping:

D'ni
Character
Pronunciation
Standard
Mapping
Linguistic
Mapping
v
"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
 (0154)
j
"j"  as in "jam" (voiced)
j
j
g
"g"  as in "good"
g
g
y
"y"  as in "yes"
y
y
k
"kh"  as 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
 (0225)
f
"f"  as in "feel"
f
f
p
"p"  as in "put"
p
p
i
"ih"  as in "sit"
i
i
E
"ee"  as in "bee"
E
í
(0237)
e
"eh"  as in "bet"
e
e
A
"ay"  as in "may"
A
é
(0233)
r
"r"  as in "riven"
r
r
m
"m"  as in "man"
m
m
T
"th"  as in "think" (unvoiced)
T
þ
 (0254)
d
"dh"  as th in "the" (voiced)
d
ð
 (0240)
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
 (0243)
c
"ch"  as in "change" (unvoiced)
c
ç
 (0231)
w
"w"  as in "well"
w
w
u
"uh"  as in "Atrus"
u
u
U
"oo"  as in "boot"
U
ú
 (0250)
x
"ts"  as in "tsetse"
x / X
c
l
"l"  as in "live"
l
l
L
non-standard "l"
L
—
q
"a"  as in "cat"
q / Y
æ
 (0230)
z
"z"  as in "zoo" (voiced)
z
z
Z
incorrect "z"
Z
—
n
"n"  as in "no"
n

n

Linguisticly Mapped letters with numbers in parenthesis beside their keyboard keys can be written by holding down the ALT key and typing in the number (in MS Windows at least). For HTML, you can use &#----; in the HTML code, replacing the dashes with the number, or —much better— use the characters' HTML entities such as š for š.



Symbol
Name
Key
0
 rUn  (zero)
0
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)
%
 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)
{ (SHIFT+[)
}
 rigasen  (twenty-three)
} (SHIFT+])
\
 rigator  (twenty-four)
\
|
 fasE  (twenty-five)
| or ;
:
 unknown  (hybrid of twenty-five and zero)
:

Symbol
Color
Key
(ALT+)
ä
red
ä
0228
Ä
orange
Ä
0196
ö
yellow
ö
0246
Ö
green
Ö
0214
ü
blue
ü
0252
Ü
violet
Ü
0220

Symbol
Name
Key
'
apostrophe
' (any apostrophy)
.
period
. (period)
-
hyphen/dash

- (any dash/hypen) or
~ (tilde) in Linguistic Mapping

  CIf you type an unmapped character you'll get a Moiety Dagger. C
 

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Limitations and known deviations from Cyan's font:


 
 

Notes:

This font was created by Colin Arenz (teKis), 1998 with help from the following:


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:

 
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Contact Info and Links:

If there is an update, you can find it at the site of jehon.

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.

The Guild of Linguists
 
 

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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!):

avo
. 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
 

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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 highlight the text, copy and paste it into a word processing program (or if you don't have D'ni Script LM installed), 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
 
 

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Myst ® , Riven ®  and all things D'ni ® are registered trademarks of Cyan, Inc.
©1993-1999 Cyan, Inc.

.Sora   Kenena  t'SemtE
HTML by Paul and Sebastian