Acceptable Acute Accent Angle Appearance

From: jameskass@att.net
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 10:41:35 EST

  • Next message: jameskass@att.net: "Re: ct, fj and blackletter ligatures"

    Doug Ewell wrote,

    > Other scripts besides Han can benefit from plain-text language tagging
    > as well. A common Latin-script example is that acute accents over
    > Polish letters have a noticeably steeper slant than they do over (e.g.)
    > French letters. ...

    John Cowan wrote,

    > Likewise the well-worn example of O WITH ACUTE, which will look
    > quite different in a proper Spanish font from a proper Polish font.

    This concept about acute angles is enshrined in TUS 3.0. On page 180,
    TUS 3.0 says,

    > ... For example, when used in Polish, U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE
    > ACCENT appears at a steeper angle than when it is used in French. ...

    Even a casual inspection of available screen fonts and printed examples
    shows a variance in acute accent angles. Acute accents which approach
    either horizontal or vertical angles seem to be just as usable in Polish
    as they are in French and Spanish.

    Individual expectations do vary, but the angle of the acute accent
    is font and user specific rather than language specific, IMHO.

    Here is a page showing a few Polish fonts, and the acute accent angle
    appears to vary from font to font.

    http://www.zem.co.uk/polsoft/zecer.htm

    Please note the angle used in the PL Casablanca font, is there
    anything about it which would preclude its use for both
    Spanish and Polish text? How about the PL Timpani font?

    Fournier's "MANUEL TYPOGRAPHIQUE" (Paris, 1764) uses a very steep
    acute accent. So do many Spanish and French examples.

    Best regards,

    James Kass.

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 11:14:02 EST