RE: Character identities

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 11:21:16 EST

  • Next message: Dominikus Scherkl: "RE: Character identities"

    At 10:53 -0500 2002-10-30, Alain LaBontÈÝ wrote:
    >A 21:46 2002-10-29 +0000, Michael Everson a écrit :
    >>At 13:27 -0800 2002-10-29, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
    >>>Michael asked:
    >>>
    >>>> My eyes have glazed over reading this discussion. What am I being
    >>>> asked to agree with?
    >>>
    >>>Here's the executive summary for those without the time to
    >>>plow through the longer exchange:
    >>>
    >>>Marco: It is o.k. (in a German-specific context) to display
    >>> an umlaut as a macron (or a tilde, or a little e above),
    >>> since that is what Germans do.
    >>>
    >>>Kent: It is *not* o.k. -- that constitutes changing a character.
    >>
    >>[Michael] Kent can't be right here.
    >
    >[Alain] However I agree with Kent. Let's say a text identified as
    >German quotes a French word with an U DIAERESIS *in the German text*
    >(a word like "capharnaüm"). It would be a heresy to show a macron in
    >a printed text in this context. In French *nobody* uses this
    >practice that is frequent in German handwriting (but not in
    >printing, unless I am wrong).

    All that means is that the German font which did that would not be
    useful for French. The underlying coded character is the same, and
    the glyph is INFORMATIVE.

    -- 
    Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
    


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