Old Cyrillic Yest

Old Cyrillic letter YEST (Є) has two variants: broad (also called
Yakornoye Yest) and narrow. They are saved in modern Ukrainian script
(only), where U+0404/0454 UKRAINIAN IE is used for the inherited BROAD
YEST and the modern, rectangle form of U+0415/0453 IE for the NARROW
YEST. Unicode Standard has a remark to use U+0404 for the Old Cyrillic
YEST, but it is unclear, how to distinguish the BROAD YEST and the
NARROW YEST. Unfortunately some fonts use U+0404/0454 for any YEST and
U+0415/0435 for the modern rectangle IE, some old-style fonts use only
the old YEST but with codepoint U+0415/0435 and do not use U+0404/0454
at all, some use U+0404/0454 for the BROAD YEST and U+0415/0435 for
the NARROW YEST... Please regulate it!
Unicode Standard has some codepoins for other broad Cyrillic letters:
U+A64C/A64D BROAD OMEGA, U+047A/047B ROUND OMEGA (misnomer, it is
broad o). Adding new codepoints for the BROAD YEST does not solve the
problem: as i said, UKRAINIAN IE and BROAD YEST is the same letter in
fact. Adding new codepoints for the NARROW YEST is bad idea too,
existing texts use U+0404/0454 for NARROW YEST more often than for
BROAD YEST (just since broad form is rare:). So we need as many as 4
new codepoints in U+A6xx block for CYRILLIC CAPITAL and SMALL LETTER
BROAD and NARROW YEST. That way we shall be able to use both
discernible letters of the Old Cyrillic, and we shall not mix them
with the modern Ukrainian letters nor each other.
Received on Mon Nov 12 2012 - 05:38:33 CST