Re: Washington Cyrillic

[bbeeton <BNB@MATH.AMS.ORG>]

hi, larry.
as the perpetrator of the ligatures in the washington cyrillic
fonts (the successors to the ams cyrillic fonts built with old
metafont), i can assure you that *for the purpose for which they
were originally designed* these ligature conventions are *not*
obsolete.  they are used quite often in math reviews, though
perhaps not quite every day.

however, ... , the problem you cite is indeed a thorny one.

       Any solutions to type the letter pair <t><s> without spoiling the 
    typography?

if math reviews hadn't insisted on changing their transliteration
scheme in 1980 this wouldn't have been a problem at all -- but they
did, and we have to live with it.  (at ams, since the fonts adhere
to the local conventions, it's obviously not as hard to live with
as it is elsewhere.  we also don't have much need for hyphenation
of russian, which of course makes things easier.)

the only suggestion that pops to mind is to redefine \cydot to
insert a zero-skip with a penalty that will discourage breaking,
but will allow hyphenation on either side.  (something like the
tugboat definition  \def\hyph{-\penalty\z@\hskip\z@skip } .)
perhaps a discretionary definition could be included, one that
puts in a hyphen if a break happens there, but nothing else.
(the 2-letter "ts" can legitimately be broken by a hyphen in
most cases, as you point out.)  i'm not going to try to write
the code for this, but offer the idea as a suggestion.

         If not, I would recommensd that a *new* series WCY be created by
    simply suppressing the renegade ligatures.

anyone who wishes is welcome to do this.  however, *please* do
remember to change all the file names.

the other suggestion i can make is to take a look at some of the
new cyrillic fonts that are being developed in russia.  the
cyrtex group is doing a fine job, and their fonts have none of
the limitations of wncy*.
						-- bb