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

[dzo at bisharat.net]

Thanks all for keeping me on the cc roster as I'm not on the dejavu-fonts list. 

Will come back to the larger question further down, but wanted first to go back briefly to the mention Denis made re some use of the N-form capital ŋ (eng) in Niger. Wondering if the occasional use of the N-form might have been an artifact of glyphs included in available fonts at some point. In any event, would be interested in more info.

A somewhat analogous situation arose wrt the capital ƴ (hooked y) a few years ago, where fonts followed the sample glyph form with hook on the left arm. Most if not all prior use of this capital letter in Africa at least had the hook on the right (like the lower case). The glyph choice in early unicode fonts led to the appearance of text with the hook on the left. No choice there - purely a function of what available fonts offered. (This issue has since been resolved.)

Wrt choices on the capital ŋ (eng), there are clearly established preferred or correct usages that differ by region. Not sure it helps to even suggest that one or another region convert to the other usage.

Key questions at this point would seem to be: (1) what would disunification require, and what might be its direct and indirect impacts; and (2) what might be the technical ways of managing implementation of two alternate glyphs for one code point (sounds like heresy but might just be something like a font choice based on locale or document metadata?). Suggesting a thorough look at costs and benefits of alternatives. 

The n-form capital ŋ (eng) is of course used in Latin-based orthographies of numerous languages in several countries in Africa. It is part of the set of characters for transcribing African languages which in the post-independence period was validated by meetings in Bamako (1966) and Niamey (1978), and promulgated on country levels by adoption of standard orthographies. Various kinds of publications over the years have used this for languages whose speakers number in the tens of millions. Messing with this, even though we're only talking about one character, could be messy. 

What is (are) the convention(s) for the capital for the less established ɲ (velar n)? I recall seeing only N-forms, but that could be a function of glyph choices in fonts.  

Personally I think one practical advantage of the n-form capital ŋ (eng) is ready distinction from the N-form capitals for n, and ɲ or ñ (the latter 2 are alternate forms for the same sound used in different countries) which are used in many of the same languages. 


Don Osborn




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-----Original Message-----
From: Trosterud Trond <trond.trosterud at uit.no>
Sender: "Eng" <eng-bounces at evertype.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 22:54:49 
To: Eng in the UCS<eng at evertype.com>
Reply-To: Eng in the UCS <eng at evertype.com>
Cc: Anthony Hornby<Anthony.Hornby at cdu.edu.au>; nocturnaldreamer<nocturnaldreamer at gmail.com>; Steven McPhillips<steven.mcphillips at gmail.com>; Cathy Bow<Cathy.Bow at cdu.edu.au>; dejavu-fonts<dejavu-fonts at lists.sourceforge.net>; Denis Jacquerye<moyogo at gmail.com>; Ben Laenen<benlaenen at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Eng] [DejaVu-fonts] New glyph for U+014A

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