From: Otto Stolz (Otto.Stolz@uni-konstanz.de)
Date: Mon Sep 27 2004 - 08:38:09 CST
Hello,
Peter Kirk had written:
> Is this unsymmetrical shape an regular part of this abbreviation?
> In that case this might be a distinct character from a breve.
Jörg Knappen has written:
> Personally, I won't rate the special design too high -- alltho I found
> a more detailed map of Romania wich exhibits both a burg-abbreviature
> for Klausenburg (romanian: Cluj) and the romanian city Bezau with a with
> breve. The breve in the abbreviature is of the fancy >>semi-cyrillic<<
> shape, the one in Bezau is a vanilla breve.
As has been said before, in this thread (by Jörg Knappen, IIRC), the
little bow in the -burg abbreviation stems from the "u" stripped
together with the "r".
Hence, I deem this character quite different from a breve (be it
»semi-cyrillic« or otherwise) and quite akin to a "u" superscript
with some special kerning applied: It's just so that the bow of
the "u" fits nicely above the gap between the bowls of "b" and
"g", respectively.
In HTML, e. g., I could write "Herrenb<sup>u</sup>g." -- but then
I'd get the kerning wrong: Virtually all browsers would assign
some space to the superscript "u", resulting in an ugly gap be-
tween "b" and "g". So I am beginning to ask myself: Should you
rather look for a kerning directive in higher-level protocols,
such as HTML?
If you, however, decide that this abbreviation should be encoded
even in plain text, then there are three possibilities:
- Encode a character GERMAN MISSING U INDICATOR (or some such)
to represent that little "u", and explain that it should take
no extra space in the x-height region. (Precedents: U+00AA,
U+00BA, as specially styled characters to be used in a very
special context only, and in rather few languages)
- Encode a Character GERMAN BURG ABBREVIATION (or some such),
and show a representative glyph for it (as in the scan from
Dierke's Atlas). (Precedents: U+01CA, U+20A7, U+213B, or
U+0A74)
- Device a general method to place, in plain text, a diacritic
between two base characters, and then define a suitable dia-
critic for this special case.
But a breve, spanning both "b" and "g": No, this does definitely
not fit the bill.
Best wishes,
Otto Stolz
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