Re: Proposal to encode three combining diacritical marks for Low German dialect writing

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Fri Jan 18 2008 - 19:45:00 CST

  • Next message: Benjamin M Scarborough: "Re: Proposal to encode three combining diacritical marks for Low German dialect writing"

    Am Freitag, 18. Januar 2008 um 23:29 schrieb Michael Everson:

    ME> At 22:59 +0100 2008-01-18, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
    >>Regarding the proposed COMBINING STRAIGHT RIGHT-POINTING HOOK BELOW
    >>and its similarity to the existing U+0238 COMBINING OGONEK, the
    >>similarity is only very superficial. ...
    >>The proposed character has a straight vertical stem ...
    >>... the stem of the ogonek is slanted or bent to the
    >>upper right, and attaches to the right of its base character.
    ME> I see. I think this is an artefact of a particular font, rather than
    ME> a principled difference from the ogonek.

    Do you see an ogonek e.g. in
    http://www.sprachatlas.phil.uni-erlangen.de/materialien/Teuthonista_Handbuch.pdf
    (German) ?

    >>These characters are at least as different as U+A722 LATIN CAPITAL
    >>LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF and U+A76A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ET (both
    >>from FPDAM3, i.e. Unicode 5.1), which are also superficially similar ...
    ME> Actually those two letters have ENTIRELY different and known origins.

    Thus, if the same is proved for the hook and the ogonek (e.g., if it
    is proved that the hook is related to Teuthonista rather than to some
    Old Norse use of the ogonek), this would convince you that the hook is
    indeed a separate character?

    ME> ... and the latter [U+A76A] is a
    ME> z-like squiggle from medieval manuscripts. (Sorry. You're wrong
    ME> there.)

    Why? Does U+A76A not look more like a 3 than a Z? Does it not look
    like U+A722, the connection of the two bows being only a little glyph
    variation? (For people who do not know better, unlike you and I and
    presumably all participiants of the Unicode list?)

    (Of course, I *know* that there are 3-like Z glyphs. But for people
    who do not know, U+A76A looks like a 3 and not like a Z. For people who do
    not know Teuthonista, the hook looks like an ogonek and not like an
    openness indicator.)

    - Karl Pentzlin



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