[Eng] [DejaVu-fonts] New glyph for U+014A

[Gilbert Adjoyi]

Please permit me to comment on the issue under discussion.
Contrary to Michael's observation that disunifying  would be unnecessary, I would say that for Ewe, one of the Ghanaian (West African) Languages that need the n-form capital Eng, the dissociation would ensure that the capital Eng never picks the N-form irrespective of the font in use. Ewe does not need the N-form Capital Eng but other languages need it. So both are necessary but we need Ewe not to pick up the N-form Capital Eng at anytime as that would distort the word for which it is used.

-----Original Message-----
From: Eng [mailto:eng-bounces at evertype.com] On Behalf Of Michael Everson
Sent: Saturday, November 9, 2013 8:33 AM
To: Denis Jacquerye
Cc: Anthony Hornby; Steven McPhillips; eng at evertype.com; Cathy Bow; dejavu-fonts; Ben Laenen
Subject: Re: [Eng] [DejaVu-fonts] New glyph for U+014A

On 8 Nov 2013, at 23:41, Denis Jacquerye <moyogo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Disunifying can be necessary, but here disunifying N-form and n-form 
> eng would be nonsense, I think.
> This is typographical variation and nothing more, each culture can 
> have its typographical variant but at the same time some cultures are 
> comfortable having several variants. How do you differentiate what is 
> shared from what is preferred?

It’s not mere “typographical variation” because the Sami for instance claim that the n-form capital Eng is WRONG, and evidently some at least some African users claim that the N-form capital Eng is WRONG. 

> For example the N-form is more common in Niger while the n-form is 
> more common in Mali (and other Western African countries) even in the 
> same language. People are aware of the variation and can chose fonts 
> that provide what they prefer.

They can’t because this stuff is served up by system fonts in Mac OS, Linux, Windows… 

> Disunifying in this case would create more problems than what we are 
> trying to solve.

I doubt that. 

> Some fonts are just not tuned to the users preference that is when 
> font selection is handy.

People saying “That’s not my letter, it’s WRONG” is not just a preference. 

I don’t think language tags is much of an answer. Frankly if nobody is brave enough to take the pain of disunifying, why don’t the round-eng people just switch to the existing characters U+0220 Ƞ and U+019E ƞ (N WITH LONG RIGHT LEG)?

> Applications need to be OpenType aware to allow fonts to provide 
> preferred glyphs.

Try that in a file system, or in one field but not another field in a FileMaker database. 

> Unfortunately Djambarrpuyŋu does not have an OpenType language tag at 
> the moment.
> Changing the default glyph for Ŋ U+014A in DejaVu Sans at this stage 
> might indeed break many users expectation.

For my purposes I just don’t use fonts that have the n-shaped capital Eng. DejaVu Sans isn’t useful. 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/


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