[XeTeX] TeXworks & XeTeX : Pinyin u-with-third-tone

[Andrew Moschou]

On 5 January 2012 06:47, Daniel Greenhoe <dgreenhoe at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> Since you are using Antykwa fonts for the newsletter,
> >> I'm wondering whether you already considered to
> >> ask the authors to add the glyph.
>
> It would make a nice Christmas gift. However, the addition called for
> would really be an entire block of glyphs. Of course standard pinyin
> requires four tone markers: first tone (high tone), second tone
> (rising tone), third tone (low tone), and forth tone (falling tone).
> And these tone markers can appear above any of the vowels a, e, i, o,
> or u. So that requires a minimum support of 20 glyphs (4x5=20 ...
> impressed with my math???)
>

Don't forget the vowel ü. My dictionary also includes the vowel ê (with the
alternative spelling ei). Exceptionally, a tone can appear on the letter n,
if the syllable does not contain a vowel, which, as far as I can tell
applies only to the character 嗯 (which can be translated as "hmm").


> In addition, and this may only be me, but I don't like to put a tone
> marker over the i because there is already an ominous dot hovering up
> there and I don't like making the upper space even more crowded with
> another symbol (and I don't like having the dot removed and simply
> replaced with a tone marker).


I'm curious, why you don't like doing this?


> So that sometimes means moving the tone
> marker to the space above a consonant, meaning at least some
> consonants glyphs with tone markers may also be good.

For example, in
>  ping(2) an(1)  (generally meaning "peace")
> where a rising tone marker is needed above the "ping", I would prefer
> to put the tone marker above the "n" rather than above the "i".


> Dan
>
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Daniel Greenhoe wrote:
> >
> >> Wouldn't a simple \v{u} render sufficient quality?
> >
> >
> > Reinhard Kotucha wrote :
> >
> >> I suppose that the idea was to use \v{u} in order to compose the
> >> glyph and am sure that you don't need LaTeX in order to achieve this.
> >
> >
> > You are both quite correct, it almost certainly would.
> > The problem is, once one starts using Unicode, one tends
> > to forget the earlier TeX methods for glyph composition,
> > and I certainly did in this case.  However, whether \v {u}
> > is really any  better than ŭ is philosophically debatable :
> > both are  kludges, and I was really looking for a cleaner solution !
> >
> >> Since you are using Antykwa fonts for the newsletter, I'm wondering
> >> whether you already considered to ask the authors to add the glyph.
> >> I suppose that the glyph is missing because they didn't know that you
> >> need it.
> >
> >
> > I hadn't considered that, mainly because I know just how
> > busy the authors are, but I suppose I might ask if they
> > could consider it in time for next year's newsletter ...
> >
> > ** Phil.
> >
> >
> >
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