Comments wanted: AGL, Unicode, T1 vs. CE/Baltic

[Hilmar Schlegel]

Lars Hellström wrote:
> 
> At 22.29 +0200 2000-09-05, Hilmar Schlegel wrote:
> >Lars Hellström wrote:
> [snip]
> >> If these characters are used in Romanian and Turkish, then why do you refer
> >> to them as Baltic characters?
> >
> >g, k, l, n, r-commaaccent as well as a, e, i, u-ogonek are Baltic
> >characters.
> 
> OK, what language(s) are _they_ used in?

Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian.

Covered by Postscript CE fonts in IsoLatin4 encoding (and derivatives in
M$-Win codepages).

> >> One could put the comma accent (and its upside-down form) in some slot in
> >> the TS1 encoding. This would be sufficient for use by the \accent primitive
> >> (and various \ialign constructions).
> >
> >This would be at least one step forward. Not optimal for building
> >ligatures though.
> 
> What ligatures would you want to build, and is it something real
> typographic or just laziness (like the -- to endash ligature)?

Just in case one wants to keep slot numbers floating and access the
characters via base + accent ligature. (also problematic with respect to
hyphenation patterns)

> >> It all sounds terribly complicated (and error-prone) to me. Wouldn't it be
> >> better to start working on a T1A (or whatever) encoding to support the
> >> needs of the languages that are partly left out in the cold by T1?
> >
> >It is complicated - therefore I mentioned that I do not see a solution
> >(I'd have suggested it here).
> >Therefore the few compromizes to come along with the least possible
> >irritation for the holy cow: "standard" T1 font layout (to avoid the
> >term encoding here).
> 
> My guess would be that the only solution you can get accepted is to make
> the comma accent working for non-hyphenated words by using the \accent
> primitive (et al.) and T1+TS1 encodings, 

This would be certainly already useful. One much simpler alternative
would be to drop the useless T/tcedilla and put there
commaaccent/gcommaaccent. This would break (non-existant)
Romanian+Baltic hyphenation but provides at least all missing characters
via the accent primitive.
I suggest using \k{S} &c as control sequence for the commaaccent: it
will not conflict with ogonek since this applies exclusively to vowels.

For setting single words (like names, addresses &c) such a scheme could
be certainly sufficient and provides a real gain in directly supported
languages by an (almost) standard Tex configuration.
At least it covers the real applications I had in this direction...
I'll probably go for it in fontinst to see if it works consistently.
Since it is not supported by Latex2e I think it will be best to control
the scheme with some auxiliary macros.

> whereas making it work with
> hyphenation requires an encoding which is distinct from T1 (in name as well
> as in definition).

For Baltic support in any case. For "standard" T1-encoding one has to
decide individually for a Turkish or Romanian version. You are in
trouble however in a situation which we had where both is required side
by side.

Best regards,
Hilmar Schlegel

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