From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Mon Aug 25 2003 - 21:47:56 EDT
At 05:15 -0700 2003-08-21, Peter Kirk wrote:
>On 21/08/2003 03:14, Michael Everson wrote:
>
>>At 10:59 +0100 2003-08-21, Paul James Cowie wrote:
>>
>>>the sign used for aleph (looks like a 3, but isn't, obviously)
>>
>>
>>Not encoded yet.
>
>What are you using for ayin?
EGYPTOLOGICAL AYIN? I don't think it is either U+02BD or U+02BF. The
former is a reversed comma, the latter a half-ring. And neither has a
capital, as the Egyptological character has.
>If you are using U+02BF, you might consider using U+02BE as an
>interim for aleph, and considering the glyph like a 3 as a
>typographic variant.
A double half-ring as a glyph variant for a single half-ring? No
thanks. And EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF is casing.
>U+02BE is commonly used for transliteration of Hebrew alef as well
>as the phoentically similar Arabic hamza. Or maybe you are using
>U+02BB or U+02BD (and yes, I know I am doing this in my Hebrew
>issues document, but only because the other glyphs were not in the
>font), not sure if you should be, in that case aleph would fit
>better with U+02BC though I guess you wouldn't want to change the
>glyph in your font as you don't want all your apostrophes looking
>like 3's.
The Egyptological characters are quite different from the other
modifier letters used for Arabic and Hebrew. Alef in general Semitics
looks like a right single quotation mark or a right-half ring.
Egyptological Alef looks like two right-half rings one over the
other, and usually these are connected. This is clearly a novel
letter. And while Semitic Ayin is often represented with either
U+02BB or U+02BF, neither of those are casing. To my mind, the
Egyptological letters exist in one-to-one relation with Gardiner G1
'Egyptian vulture' (ALEF), M17 'flowering reed' (YOD) and 36
'forearm' (AYIN) apart from the casing which has been added in modern
editorial practice.
>Or would U+021D or U+025C be suitable for your 3?
U+021D is yogh, which is what it is. It is not an Alef, and the
resemblance is only superficial. And U+025C is a reverse epsilon, not
an Alef.
>>>the sign used for yod (looks like a i with a right ring tick above it)
>
>This one looks rather like U+1EC9 though I am not sure if the hook
>above is quite the right shape for you. You might prefer a regular i
>followed by U+0357 COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE. Or maybe U+0313
>would be preferred, this is the Greek smooth breathing and looks
>like a comma.
None of the above.
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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