Re: 'lower case a' and 'script a' in unicode

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Mar 24 2005 - 18:56:44 CST

  • Next message: James Kass: "Re: 'lower case a' and 'script a' in unicode"

    On 25/03/2005 00:08, James Kass wrote:

    >Peter Kirk wrote,
    >
    >
    >
    >>Or try Doulos SIL, which, although not strictly designed for IPA, has
    >>been carefully designed with all the needed characters and all the
    >>possible smarts for IPA - and will also display slanted normal glyphs as
    >>it has (so far) no italic version.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >Exactly. And since the developers of both Doulos SIL and Cardo well know
    >the need to maintain such distinctions, we should expect that any future
    >italic versions would do so.
    >
    >

    But why should they? After all, the main audience for Doulos SIL is not
    IPA but general purpose multilingual typesetting. And for such purposes
    the desired behaviour is to change the glyph shape for italics. And
    there are already Doulos italic glyphs used in non-Unicode Doulos fonts,
    which follow the regular typesetting convention.

    But I agree with Alec's point that it would be helpful to have a way of
    suppressing that glyph change, because it is a significant difference in
    character properties, the preservation of which is necessary for proper
    representation of IPA and of the Fe'fe' language - and sometimes in
    other scholarly transcriptions e.g. this distinction is made in a
    Persian grammar book I used to have. So, I would want to propose a
    separate "a" character, or perhaps a variation sequence, which is always
    rendered with a double loop, for use in IPA, Fe'fe' etc. The separate
    "g" for IPA is good precedent, although in that case the distinction is
    not a regular/italic difference but one between different fonts.

    Actually, to me the best argument against Alec's point is that IPA
    shapes are supposed to be fixed and therefore not italicised at all. But
    that doesn't apply to Fe'fe'. 

    -- 
Peter Kirk
peter@qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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