What's new in 0.10

I said in the version 0.9 "what's new" that the future of the project was
uncertain because of my career situation.  That was a little over three
years ago.  Subsequent to the 0.9 release, I went to Denmark for a couple of
years on a postdoctoral fellowship.  I made some effort to work
Tsukurimashou into my academic work, including a couple of publications I
will cite below, but for the most part, work on this project was shelved as
I made it my top priority to find a long-term academic position.

My efforts were not successful, and in 2016, after 15 years in academic
research aiming for a professorship, I decided it was time to seek a
different career path.  I moved back to Canada and went into the electronic
musical instruments business.  Please visit North Coast Synthesis Ltd., at
https://northcoastsynthesis.com/, for high-quality Eurorack modules and
kits.

With November 2017, I was considering doing a NaNoWriMo project ("National
Novel Writing Month"---the idea is to write a 50,000-word work of fiction
in 30 days) but decided instead to aim for adding five new kanji to
Tsukurimashou each day and have them be the ones needed for the next
release, namely Grade Five kanji.  That actually meant more than five
characters per day on average, as some of the Grade Fives entailed creating
other characters first to use as components.  A few days ago I completed
the Grade Five set and have spent the time since, working on other issues
needed to prepare the 0.10 release.

This version 0.10 is being pushed out in a bit of a rush, again, because
after three years with no releases I'd like to confirm that the project is
not dead, and get as much visible progress in this November push as
possible.  My roadmap for future releases is to push 0.11 halfway through
Grade Six, 0.12 at the end of Grade Six, and then it'll be the big one:
Tsukurimashou 1.0, with no specific kanji promised beyond Grade Six but a
more polished release addressing issues that may still remain after the 0.12
release.  It is my hope that version 1.0 will be usable enough that I can
sell precompiled binaries of it; I have no illusions of actually making any
real money that way, but maybe some people would like to have an official,
physical DVD of the Tsukurimashou fonts and support the project a little.

My academic journal article about IDSgrep was published in the
International Journal of Asian Language Processing and you can read
it (open access) at
  http://colips.org/journals/volume23/23.2.4_idsgrep-article-final.pdf . 
I also presented a conference paper on algorithmic aspects at the 9th
International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2016)
in Tokyo, and that one is online (behind a paywall) at
  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46759-7_11 .

This version contains significant revisions to FontAnvil and some of the
other associated software, but those are still too new and experimental for
detailed comment here.  FontForge contained a lot of semi-hardcoded tables
of font information, with semi-automated software for generating the C code
to express those tables.  I have introduced a new tool of my own called
Icemap for solving that problem in a more principled way, but I'm not up to
writing a detailed document for it yet.  Dig around in the source code, and
consider it pre-alpha, if you want.

Without wanting to get too personal, the next couple of years are going to
be critical for me in the course of my life.  I'm not making Tsukurimashou
for money but I do need money; academia didn't work out and it's not clear
electronics manufacturing will either; and any help and support you can give
me is welcome if it is in the form I need.  The best thing you can do is buy
my synthesizer modules (that URL again is
  https://northcoastsynthesis.com/ ;
but I realize they are only of use to a few people.  Failing that anything
that increases the profile of my business or this project would be very
welcome.  Please, circulate that URL and the URL of the Tsukurimashou home
page (http://tsukurimashou.osdn.jp/) in your social media, and talk
and write about Tsukurimashou!  It is only because of your continued support
that I am able to continue working on this project.  よろしくお願いします。

