Re: Sample of german -burg abbreviature

From: Otto Stolz (Otto.Stolz@uni-konstanz.de)
Date: Mon Sep 27 2004 - 08:38:09 CST

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: Sample of german -burg abbreviature"

    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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