Re: [Freefont-bugs] IPA glyphs need correction, Serif and Sans

[Primoz PETERLIN]

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On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Denis Jacquerye wrote:

> According to Michael Everson the U+0251 looks like a Greek alpha in
> italic, at least in Finno-Ugric texts.

That makes some sense - it is more "italicized" or more hand-written than 
the usual "a".

> There's another regular vs italic conflict I noticed. Latin small
> letter f U+0066 in italic looks like a Latin small letter f with hook
> U+0192.

This indeed happens in Serif Italic and Serif Bold Italic. Perhaps it is
meant to be so? After all, the other name of this character is "Latin
small letter script F". My copy of "Phonetic Symbol Guide" (University of
Chicago, 1996) tells me that the script variant (U+0192) represents
International African Institute's choice for the voiceless labiodental
fricative that IPA usually represents with small Greek phi. Are there any 
cases where U+0066 and U+0192 are used simultaneously?

With kind regards, Primoz

> > > > I noticed the U+0251 (LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA a.k.a LATIN SMALL
> > > > LETTER SCRIPT A) is going to be troublesome in Serif fonts. In
> > > > Freefont Serif it looks like the U+0061 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A) from
> > > > Serif Italic.
> > > > The problem arises when trying to add U+0251 to the Italic font.
> > >
> > > I am aware of the problem, but I don't know any elegant solution to it at
> > > the moment. It is even worse in Sans, where it isn't limited to slanted
> > > variant.
> > >
> > > A similar situation arises in Sans with the U+0261 LATIN SMALL LETTER
> > > SCRIPT G, which looks identical like the U+0067 LATIN SMALL LETTER G. In
> > > Serif, you don't have any such problems in the upright variant, but in
> > > Italic you have the same as with U+0251.
> > >
> > > It is tempting to blame IPA for choosing typographic variants of existing
> > > letters for their symbols, but in the end we will have to deal with the
> > > existing situation.
> >
> > The U+0067 and U+0261 actually makes sense for fonts where the g
> > U+0067 has two storey, since the IPA g U+0261must be a script g with a
> > single storey below the baseline. I don't know why they didn't apply
> > the same logic to a, by adding the required a so U+0061 wouldn't have
> > to look like what IPA needs. I guess they didn't consider the usage of
> > IPA characters in Italic or stylistic fonts. It is a serious problem
> > for the languages actually using the latin script a U+0251. Maybe a
> > solution would be to make the script a more like a greek alpha and
> > keep the italic a U+0061 as it is. I'll try to get more info on the
> > a12n list on how people actually using U+0251, might use it in Italic.
> --
> Denis Moyogo Jacquerye --- http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo
> 

- -- 
Primož Peterlin,   Inštitut za biofiziko, Med. fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani
Lipičeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija.  address@hidden
Tel +386-1-5437632, fax +386-1-4315127,  http://biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si/~peterlin/
F8021D69 OpenPGP fingerprint: CB 6F F1 EE D9 67 E0 2F  0B 59 AF 0D 79 56 19 0F
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