Re: OT? Languages with letters that always take diacriticals

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Mar 16 2004 - 15:41:45 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: OT? Languages with letters that always take diacriticals"

    At 12:07 PM 3/16/2004, Antoine Leca wrote:
    > > (For example, old German in Frakkur typeface has been decided to be
    > > just different font, but the same lattin letters as we know today)
    >
    >Like U+017F? ;-)

    A little known fact is that the long s cannot be implemented as your typical
    context-based glyph substitution. The reason for that lies in the fact
    that (at least in German) the end of each word in a compound is treated
    as a 'final' position, requiring the regular 's'.

    Not even a dictionary based approach suffices, as

    Wach-stube and Wachs-tube

    use the same letters, but have different internal division, which
    results in differences in the choice of 's'.

    Since the use of the long s is an essential feature of Fraktur, it's
    really not possible to take a text in Fraktur and simply change the
    font.

    The reverse is even less workable: not only are there issues like the
    long s, but certain words of foreign origin are never written in Fraktur.

    A similar case has not been made for the i / dotless i in Irish.

    A./



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