Re: GR and letter case Was: Gwoyeu Romatzyh marking the optional neutral tone

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Jul 14 2009 - 11:55:10 CDT

  • Next message: Asmus Freytag: "Re: Gwoyeu Romatzyh marking the optional neutral tone"

    On 7/14/2009 1:54 AM, André Szabolcs Szelp wrote:
    > I missed this message due to the changed subject.
    >
    > A "SUBSCRIPT RING" in the modifier letter class, as Christoph suggests
    > in this message does already exist:
    > U+02F3 MODIFIER LETTER LOW RING
    As you can see from the message you copied, I was quite aware of 02F3.
    >
    > Typographically, it might sit just slightly to deep. However, being a
    > spacing character, I wonder whether this is not just a glyph/font issue.
    For some characters the "it's just slightly off" really means it's a
    different character.

    The character we are trying to analyze is clearly a subscript. In the
    samples it harmonizes with the subscripted double prime (or double
    vertical bar?) for the tertiary stress.

    In the samples
    (http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uyhc/files/images/p1070002.preview.jpg)
    it does not fully harmonize with the period used for neutral stress -
    they appear to not have the same center, as one would perhaps expect.
    However, the period is ordinarily positioned so that it aligns at the
    top of these subscripts, which gives some consistency in appearance.

    Not having actual samples of material using the low ring, I can only go
    by its appearance in the charts, and it's quite a bit lower there, lower
    than a subscripted character.

    As long as that chart glyph is not an aberration, I would very much
    hesitate to forcibly unify these.

    A./
    >
    > Szabolcs
    >
    > 2009/7/14 Christoph Burgmer <cburgmer@ira.uka.de
    > <mailto:cburgmer@ira.uka.de>>
    >
    > Am Dienstag, 14. Juli 2009 schrieb Asmus Freytag:
    > > What you have is a typographically the same thing as if you took the
    > > U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN and moved its circle down from its superscript
    > > position into a subscript position.
    > >
    > > The two characters that come closest are U+02F3 MODIFIER LETTER
    > LOW RING
    > > and U+302D IDEOGRAPHIC ENTERING TONE MARK.
    > >
    > > The latter is a combining mark (intended presumably for
    > ideographs - and
    > > therefore suspect in terms of whether typical implementations would
    > > yield correct alignment with Latin letters). However, the
    > placement of
    > > this character relative to the baseline is close to what the samples
    > > show - at least in some fonts.
    > >
    > > The former may be too low: the sample glyph in the Unicode code
    > charts
    > > rests entirely below the baseline - depending on the font, even
    > quite
    > > far below.
    > >
    > > A new character,
    > >
    > > SUBSCRIPT RING
    > >
    > > would be my recommendation
    >
    > How would we treat letter case as of UTR#21? Even using full stop
    > for the
    > compulsory neutral tone turns up wrong title case (example in Python):
    >
    > >>> "bu jy.daw".title()
    > 'Bu Jy.Daw'
    >
    > Though in my eyes it should be
    > 'Bu Jy.daw'
    >
    > Would UTR#21 even handle those cases? Would such a character fall
    > into the
    > "Letter Modifier" class?
    > Python btw has a buggy implementation for UTR#21, so this example
    > is as far as
    > you can go.
    >
    > -Christoph
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > --
    > Szelp, André Szabolcs
    >
    > +43 (650) 79 22 400



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