[Fontinst] Re: Bug in fontinstversion{1.927}

[Lars Hellström]

At 23.02 +0100 2005-01-26, Lars Hellström wrote:
>At 22.23 +0100 2005-01-26, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>Am 26.01.2005 um 20:34 schrieb Lars Hellström:
>>
>>> The various ties should be U+0361 (COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE).
>>
>>I thought of CHARACTER TIE at U+2040 ...
>
>Oh! It could be. One has to check the character properties to be sure, and
>I'm too sleepy for that now.

I've checked the properties now: The tie accent (and its variants) is
definitely U+0361 rather than U+2040. The former has character class Mn
(nonspacing mark) like all the other accents, whereas the latter has
character class Pc (connecting punctuation) and is thus most like
underscore (U+005F, LOW LINE). A U+0361 should be placed above a pair of
letters, whereas a U+2040 would rather be placed between them.


More on symbol identification: Hilmar Schlegel (who, it seems, doesn't want
his e-mail addressed publicised on the mailing list archives), sent me the
following:

>Lars Hellström wrote:
>
>...
>>
>>>8j seems to be no problem since the Adobe Glyph
>>>List provides a mapping of PostScript glyph names to Unicode slots. But
>>>these TeX encodings: is there some easy to understand mapping of
>>>capitalacute,
>>
>>
>> I'd label this as a glyphic variation on `acute'.
>
>Would be good to have upper case accent characters - some TT fonts have
>them as internal components.
>
>>
>>
>>>threequartersemdash,
>>
>>
>> No, that doesn't seem to be in the Unicode standard, but it could be a mere
>> glyphic variation on `emdash'. Does anyone know where and how it is used?
>
>- -> hyphen
>-- -> endash (half quad)
>--- -> threequartersemdash (3/4 quad)
>---- -> emdash (1 quad size)

Hmm... Obviously not the standard setup, but quite possible.

>I use this all the time to avoid the ugly tight set emdashes one finds
>in English texts.

Tight setting or not is a matter of typographical tradition. I may be worth
to point out that the TUGboat class (and Plain-TeX macro predecessors)
provide commands for non-tight setting of en- and emdashes, so it certainly
isn't unanimous even in English typography.

But how would a threequartersemdash avoid tight setting? Is the glyph 1em
wide but its bounding box only 0.75em?

>Some publishers even had to resort to avoid the emdash
>  in general because it is too ugly (even when set with separating
>spaces ;-). The result is then that -- will be used for rangedash
>(without spaces) and punctdash (with spaces).

This may well be the *non-anglosaxian* typographic tradition. (Kind of like
the \nonfrenchspacing is an anglosaxian speciality.) Using a half-quad-dash
with spaces around is at least the old Swedish typographical tradition.

>Just found that a figuredash would be nice for numbers with dashes
>within running text

Hmm... I think the main thing that sets figuredash out is its vertical
position; it is aligned for upper case digits (non-hanging) rather than as
endash aligned for lower case letters and digits. But this might vary.

>(like ISBN &c)... The minus is to too long, a hyphen
>too short & fat,

That's bad. But the hyphen still is (possibly with exception for
figuredash) the typographically *correct* sign.

>an endash might be not exactly the width of the numbers.

Not to mention that an endash with numbers strongly signals a *range*

>
>
>>>hyphendblchar, hyphendbl,
>>
>>
>> Glyphic variations on `hyphen'. (Also cf. `hyphenchar'.)
>>
>
>In Fraktur fonts the hyphen is a slightly slanted double line. One would
>typically want to use this instead of the usual hyphen but I think it
>was supplied as an additional character...

This is probably an example of the tc* fonts being designed more as the
"Expert" set for the ec* fonts than as a logically coherent symbol font.

>>
>>>tieaccentlowercase, newtie ... to Unicode?
>>
>>
>> Those two ought to be somewhere (or be glyphic variations on something) in
>> Unicode. As I recall it, the `newtie' is the same as the ordinary `tie',
>> but the command for it is supposed to be used in a different position.
>>
>> Perhaps some German can tell us? I haven't seen any mention of these things
>> being used anywhere else than there.
>
>That's what I can tell you;-)
>BTW, typical encodings lack the apostrophe character (curved shape, like
>lower part of semicolon) which is in (bonafide) Fraktur fonts different
>>from a right quote (prime shape, shifted comma).

??  I can agree prime is usually straight, but in my experience the comma
is more often curved than straight. However this experience may be based
mostly on antiqua fonts.

>Regards,
>Hilmar
>
>###

Lars Hellström