Editing Javanese script (section)

===Decline===
[[File:Mesin ketik beraksara Jawa buatan pabrik Royal Bar-Lock.jpg|left|thumb|A Javanese script typewriter that was once used by Keraton Surakarta from 1917 to 1960 for correspondence, issuing decrees, and announcements.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://muspen.kominfo.go.id/koleksi/single?id=228|title=Mesin Ketik Huruf Jawa|last=|first=|date=|website=Museum Penerangan|access-date=8 November 2021|archive-date=2022-06-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220625130959/https://muspen.kominfo.go.id/koleksi/single?id=228|url-status=live}}</ref>]] As literacy rates and the demand for reading materials increased at the beginning of the 20th century, Javanese publishers paradoxically began to decrease the amount of Javanese script publication due to a practical and economic consideration: printing any text in Javanese script at the time required twice the amount of paper compared to the same text rendered in [[Javanese orthography|the Latin alphabet]], making Javanese texts more expensive and time-consuming to produce. In order to lower production costs and keep book prices affordable to the general populace, many publishers gradually prioritized publications in the Latin alphabet.{{sfn|Robson|2011|pp=25}}{{efn|name=rinkes|According to D. A. Rinkes, the director of the government-owned [[Balai Pustaka]], writing in 1920, "[using Roman type] considerably simplifies matters for European users, and for interested Natives presents no difficulty at all, seeing that the Javanese language... can be rendered no less clearly in roman type than in the Javanese script. In this way the costs are about one third of printing in Javanese characters, seeing that printing in that type, which furthermore is not readily available, is one and a half times to twice as expensive (and more time-consuming) than in roman type, also because it cannot be set on a setting-machine, and one page of Javanese type only contains about half the number of words on one page of the same text in roman script."
|attr1=Poerwa Soewignja dan Wirawangsa (1920:4), quoted by Molen (1993:83)
|attr2=Robson (2011:25)
}} However, the Javanese population at the time maintained the use of Javanese script in various aspects of everyday life. It was, for example, considered more polite to write a letter using Javanese script, especially one addressed toward an elder or superior. Many publishers, including Balai Pustaka, continued to print books, newspapers, and magazines in Javanese script due to sufficient, albeit declining, demand. The use of Javanese script only started to drop significantly during the [[Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies]] beginning in 1942.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jQ0KAQAAIAAJ|title=Tata-sastra: ngewrat rembag 4 bab : titi-wara tuwin aksara, titi-tembung, titi-ukara, titi-basa|first=R. D. S.|last=Hadiwidjana|publisher=U.P. Indonesia|year=1967}}</ref> Some writers attribute this sudden decline to prohibitions issued by the Japanese government banning the use of native script in the public sphere, though no documentary evidence of such a ban has yet been found. Nevertheless, the use of Javanese script did decline significantly during the Japanese occupation and it never recovered its previous widespread use in post-independence Indonesia.