From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Sat Dec 06 2003 - 02:46:44 EST
Philippe, This is an interesting inventory and prompts a couple of
questions. First, do you have a corresponding list of languages (and
countries) for these various characters? That would be useful. Second, is
this part of a project?
On the characters themselves quick comments re 4 that you mention:
* Re alpha, in what languages do you see these uses? In Latin transcription
of Tamasheq, I believe the alpha may have been suggested as an alternative
to the a with turned breve/caron - IOW, the usage of the alpha and one of
these diacritical characters would be equivalent (not really an answer to
the lack of a capital alpha when you need it)
* Again the r-bar issue - is this to be a precomposed pair of characters
now?
* Re u-bar, this is apparently in the DRC by up to three languages (Lengu,
Mangbetu, Budu) and in Cameroon reportedly by 7 (West. Ejagham, Fe'efe'e,
Kozime, Limbum, Mekaa, Yamba, and Yemba). Having LC but not capital forms
leaves options of composing the capital (not ideal) or adding another
precomposed.
* Re hooked w this was discussed on a12n-collaboration as being used in one
language of Burkina Faso (Puguli). See, among others,
http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-collaboration/msg00474.html
(the latter also has a mention of the u-bar).
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr>
To: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
Cc: "Unicode@Unicode.Org" <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 6:12 AM
Subject: RE: Missing African Latin letters
> Michael Everson wrote:
> > Philippe Verdy wrote:
> > > Some letters used in Latin transcription of Pan-Sahelian scripts
> > > are still missing in Unicode:
> > > Is there a proposal to include them, as they are needed for case
> > > folding and capital transcription?
> > > I can identify immediately these two ones that would be needed on
> > > Pan-Sahelian keyboards:
> > >
> > >U+027E LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK
> > >U+???? LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK
> > >
> > >U+0266 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH HOOK
> > >U+???? LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H WITH HOOK
> >
> > Looking at the International Niamey keyboard layout given at
> >
>
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=IntlNiameyK
> ybd
> > it can be observed that, of the set of letters used, four of them do
> > not have capital forms:
> >
> > U+0266 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH HOOK
> > U+027E LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK
>
> I gave these two ones in my message.
>
> > U+0251 LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA
>
> (Note that the Big Alpha has a glyph often made distinct from an uppercase
> A, using a rounded top instead of the angular shape, but some writers seem
> to add a turned breve (or a breve or another diacritic) above a standard
A,
> to make it appear as Alpha and not A. Sometimes the "alpha" is marked with
a
> AE or ae letter (I think it comes from limited character sets, where AE
was
> present but there was no possible distinction for the Latin letter Alpha).
I
> don't know the language in which it is written, so I can't say if they are
a
> fallback convention for printing or a separate orthographic letter. May be
> an Africanist will reply to this...
>
> > U+0273 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
>
> I did not list them, but there are other missing capital letters:
> (outside of glottal stops which do not seem to have case
> variation, although it may be possible that this is rendred
> in some African texts for titles):
>
> 01AA;LATIN LETTER REVERSED ESH LOOP;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;<??>;;<??>;
> <??>;LATIN CAPITAL REVERSED ESH LOOP;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;01AA;;
>
> 01BA;LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH TAIL;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;<??>;;<??>;
> <??>;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ESH WITH TAIL;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;01BA;;
>
> 0271;LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH HOOK;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;LATIN SMALL LETTER M
> HOOK;<??>;;<??>;
> <??>;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH HOOK;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;0271;;
>
> 0289;LATIN SMALL LETTER U BAR;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;<??>;;<??>;
> <??>;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U BAR;Lu;O;L;;;;;N;;;0289;;
>
> 028C;LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED V;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;<??>;;<??>;
> <??>;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED V;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;028C;;
>
> On the opposite, there seems also to exist x-height bilabial click (i.e. a
> lowercase version, the encoded one being probably uppercase/noncased)...
>
> 0298;LATIN LETTER BILABIAL CLICK;<???Lu???>;0;L;;;;;N;LATIN LETTER
> BULLSEYE;;<??>;;
> <??>;LATIN SMALL LETTER BILABIAL CLICK;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;0298;;0298;
>
> And of course there are the three missing letters:
>
> U+???? LATIN SMALL LETTER R BAR
> U+???? LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R BAR
>
> U+???? LATIN SMALL LETTER W WITH HOOK
> U+???? LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W WITH HOOK
>
> U+???? LATIN SMALL LETTER KHI (or X WITH HOOK?)
> U+???? LATIN CAPITAL LETTER KHI (or X WITH HOOK?)
>
> And did not check all the letter variants composed with lower dots rather
> than hooks and bars, but this second set seems complete.
>
>
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