From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sat Jan 03 2004 - 12:03:51 EST
On 03/01/2004 07:20, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk@qaya.org>
>
>
>>This letter looks nothing like U+01A3, which is also visible in the
>>bottom line of the attachment.
>>
>>
>
>You exhibit a glyph that ressembles to the two ligated digits "01", where
>the second goes below the baseline. This type of glyph variant is well known
>in some fonts that do not display all digits aboge the base line (notably
>the 4, 7 and 9 digits often have descenders). The right part of the glyph in
>Arial Unicode MS is rounded rather than angular like a "1" for this second
>part. This can be seen as a matter of style. But the first time I saw this
>"LETTER OI", I first identified it as a variant of "g" or "9", then the
>Unicode name uggested it would read as a ligature of a "o" and a dotless "i"
>or iota...
>
>
>
In fact it should be considered a variant of g. Its pronunciation is
that of small caps G (U+0262) or small caps inverted R (U+0281).
>I don't know which language really uses this character, but given the
>various way it appears in fonts, your proposed character really is within
>the variations admitted in some fonts to represent U+01A3.
>
>
>
Are we talking about two different characters? There is one in the
bottom row of the picture I sent before, a consonant, which is U+01A2
(because it's a capital) and which looks very like the Unicode reference
glyph, and not very different from the Arial Unicode MS and Code2000
glyphs; according to the data I have, this was used in Azerbaijani from
1923 to 1939. And there is one in the third row, right hand side (above
M) which does not look like any Unicode reference glyph that I know of,
and which is a vowel pronounced like Turkish dotless i; this was used
from 1923 until 1933 when it was replaced by something looking very like
U+042C, the Cyrillic soft sign.
>If there's a bad name for "LETTER OI", then how can we interpret the Unicode
>assignment, if neither the representative glyph, not available glyphs in
>common fonts, nor the noramtive Unicode name will reveal abstract character
>identity?
>
>
>
The representative glyph for this character seems to be good. But, given
that the name is so misleading but cannot be changed, it is good that
there is a note "= gha" in the Unicode character charts.
But in the light of naming errors like this one implementers should be
advised not to use character names, because they are not reliably helpful.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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