Re: Back to Coptic (was: Demystifying the Politburo)

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 04:44:17 CDT

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    At 23:48 -0700 2005-07-07, John Hudson wrote:

    >I'm inclined to think that U+2CEA might be presented either with or
    >without the bar, and that this is a glyph design decision.

    That is not the encoding model we used for Coptic. All of the Coptic
    letters can take the abbreviation bar. That includes SYMBOL SHIMA
    SIMA.

    >Personally, I would include both forms in a font, but would probably
    >make the form with the bar the default glyph simply because it seems
    >much more common.

    That would be a mistake, because the recommendation is to encode a
    text with explicitly encoded combining abbreviation bars whenever an
    abbreviation is wanted. So if I encode a text with my font that way,
    and then somebody displays it in your font with a default barred
    glyph, the result will be SHIMA SIMA with two bars over it.

    >The issue is a little clouded by the separate encoding of the
    >abbreviation bar, but there is at least a partial parallel in the
    >European ordinals, which may be written with or without a bar
    >beneath them.

    When a bar occurs, use the combining character. Don't draw the bar in
    a default glyph. It may be the case COPTIC SYMBOL SHIMA SIMA may not
    be used on its own, without an abbreviation bar. But the abbreviation
    bar must be separately encoded, otherwise the representation of
    abbreviations is not uniform for Coptic.

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


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