Re: n4013 Proposal to encode additional Runic characters in the UCS [was: Three modest proposals]

From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2011 - 18:17:05 CDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: n4013 Proposal to encode additional Runic characters in the UCS [was: Three modest proposals]"

    2011/4/3 Andrew West <andrewcwest@gmail.com>:
    >> I guess you consider it as a glyph variation of the same character.
    >
    > Yes.  Possibly it is intended to be a word-final variant, but that is
    > not certain from the limited examples available.
    >
    >> By the way, Andrew West's "BabelStone Moon Rune" font is supposed to make the corresponding glyph change.
    >
    > And does indeed automatically make the corresponding glyph change
    > under Windows XP, Vista and 7.  That is the beauty of OpenType.

    And the font also substitutes the c-form for the k-form if you type in
    the word "knock" in runes, which begs the question, "Why not just
    treat these two runeforms as glyph variants of the same character,
    like you do the d-rune?" My answer to that would be that Tolkien's
    two d-runeforms both have the same fundamental character identity,
    both being used to tranliterate Latin letter D; whereas Tolkien's
    c-rune and k-rune, although closely related at the glyph level, have
    different fundamental character identities, one being used to
    transliterate Latin letter C and the other to transliterate Latin
    letter K. My Moon Runes font uses an unsatisfactory OpenType hack to
    render "knocks" correctly, but it does not work for other words
    spelled with c or k, and cannot do so because c vs k is not
    predictable in English. In contrast, it is likely that Tolkien's
    boxed d-rune is intended for word-final use, in which case the correct
    glyph form can be predictively applied by the OpenType tables in the
    font.

    Andrew



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