From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 10:38:15 EST
At 00:54 -0600 27/03/2003, David Starner wrote:
>I've found these characters in a book called "The Annals of the
>Cakchiquels", by Daniel G. Brinton. They have a little history, as noted
>by the tag in the picture. The tz is for a tz sound, and is probably
>just a glyph variant of that character. The 4 is called a cuatrillo, the
>reversed three is called the tresillo, and the 4 with a comma is
>cuatrillo con coma. Are these still in use anywhere? Are they
>appropriate suspects for Unicode?
In principle they are candidates for Unicode, as it is probable that
there is a significant body of historical literature containing them,
rather like yogh in Middle English.
Having said that, one would expect a good deal of research to be done
before approaching these. How many languages were they used for? What
sounds do they represent? How do modern scholars producing critical
editions present them? (If they use digit 4, I would consider that to
be a fault in the character set or font, and, in my opinion, a Latin
letter should be added, because the quatrillo is not a quatro.) Do
they appear in casing pairs? On the face of it tz looks like a
ligature of t and z.
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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