Re: U+25CA LOZENGE - why is it in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (and therefore widespread in current fonts)?

From: Philippe Verdy <verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 05:08:51 +0200

For African use as a Latin letter, it's unfortunate that most fonts
show Æ’ (LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK) in italic style, as if it was
a florin symbol. This letter should better be vertically straight,
like an f with just the hook added below, and adopting an italic style
only in italic fonts, not in roman fonts.

Only the florin sign should remain italic and thus disunified (its
shape should not change significantly in italic fonts, as it could
collide easily with surrounding digits or could become too large to
fit in monospaced cells for digits with standard figure-width).

A renderer using a font that does not have a mapping for the florin
sign should be able to synthetize it by italicizing the vertical shape
of the LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK, or better by using the mapping
of that letter in an italic variant font in the same font family.

2012/8/13 Michael Everson <everson_at_evertype.com>:
> On 13 Aug 2012, at 15:20, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>
>> Mac fonts also included Æ’ (LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK). This was due to the fact that names of folders used the name 'foo Æ’] - or 'foo U+0192', if you wish. It was, however, usually only when the system or an app created a folder name that the Æ’ was added. Humans creating a folder name seldom added it, I think.
>
> No, humans learnt to do it. And we still do: it's right there on alt-f on the US/GB/IE keyboards. It's unfortunate that this italic character which is really the same thing as the florin sign was unified with the African Ƒƒ because I am sure it makes fonts tend to be unsuitable for African use. In fact Just looking at it in this e-mail I see that my own ƒ is not really suitable, as it should be as long as a j. fjƒɲ. I[m going to go fix that.
Received on Mon Aug 13 2012 - 22:11:29 CDT

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