glyph variants

From: peter_constable@sil.org
Date: Fri Sep 03 1999 - 17:54:46 EDT


       For all the discussion that went on this week during the
       conference about glyph variants for CJK, I never thought to ask
       about this:

       Because of the near ubiquitous use of Latin, I'd imagine that
       anyone shipping a font for a non-Latin script would probably
       also include glyphs for at least the Basic Latin and maybe also
       Latin-1 blocks.

       Now, I want to build an Ethiopic font. Ethiopic has a full stop
       that consists of 4 dots, but I understand that there is also a
       single dot (similar to latin full stop) used for abbreviations.
       (I'll call the Latin/Ethiopic single dot characters "period" to
       avoid confusion.) Now, the period glyph that's needed to go
       with Ethiopic glyphs is (typically) slightly larger and
       slightly more widely spaced than would be the period glyph
       that's needed for to go with Latin glyphs. So, here's a glyph
       variation problem that has nothing to do with CJK.

       Of course, we heard from Dirk Meyer and from John Jenkins that
       such problems can be solved in OpenType and AAT. But for the
       moment, not many apps out there have the infrastructure built
       in to deal with that yet.

       The only options I can think of for existing apps are:

       - Just make the glyph mapped from U+0027 the one suited for
       Ethiopic, since the font is primarily intended for Ethiopic,
       and only secondarily for Latin; i.e. there's no period glyph
       suited for Latin.

       - Do the above for the Ethiopic glyph, and map the Latin glyph
       from U+2024 ONE DOT LEADER.

       - Map the Latin period from U+0027 and the Ethiopic period from
       U+2024.

       (I'm facing similar issues for Yi, but with Yi I can also
       consider using U+FF0E FULLWIDTH FULL STOP.)

       Any opinions on the best solution?

       Peter



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