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

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 14:12:53 CDT

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    At 14:36 -0400 2005-07-08, Patrick Andries wrote:

    >Personnaly, I still think this symbol should have a bar on top

    When it needs one, use U+0305. Then you will have a bar on the top.
    You also don't have to remember that "oh, this is the one I don't
    have to type the bar on". You can just type the bar when you need the
    bar.

    That's why the encoding model is consistent, and that is why we don't
    need to change it to an inconsistent encoding model by "fixing" the
    glyph.

    >I think no other symbol is divided like this, it is not a series of
    >letters being abbreviated, it is already an abbreviation by itself
    >(as a glyph variant).

    What does "it is already an abbreviation by itself" mean? "As a glyph
    variant" of what?

    SYMBOL SHIMA SIMA is a fossilized ligature which has found its way
    into the typographic tradition. Like other text elements (the
    letters), this symbol can take the abbreviation bar -- indeed it may
    always do so. It would be inconsistent and nonsensical to encode this
    with a precomposed abbreviation bar. That could mislead users. All of
    the abbreviation bars should be explicitly encoded.

    >Sorry: other symbols, but they were only explained in a single
    >sentence as abbreviations in the proposal, after the adhoc we
    >accepted them as symbols, but we opposed the SHIMA SIMA since it is
    >a regular abbreviation.

    What on earth do you mean by "it is a regular abbreviation"? All of
    these symbols are letter ligatures.

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


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