Accumulated Feedback on PRI #278

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Date/Time: Tue Jul 8 20:28:28 CDT 2014
Name: Philippe Verdy
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI 278 (UTR 50 Unicode Vertical Text Layout)

Isn"t there an error in the positioning of the glyph presented for the 
vertical layout of U+301E (which is the same as U+301D);
U+301D REVERSED DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK		
U+301E DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK		

Normally these glyphs are composed in the horizontal layout as two vertical half-squares

* in U+301D the first one to the left is empty, it becomes the first empty horizontal 
half-square in the vertical layout (and the cisible glyph in the second half-square is 
mirrored) it is used at the begining of quoted text;

* but in U+301E the first vertical half-square becomes the *second* (lower) horizontal 
half square. Then you cannot make the difference between REVERSED and (non-REVERSED) 
double primes (used at the end of a quoted text It should be in the upper-right part, 
rather than lower-right part, even if it's not mirrored and stokes are drawn top to 
bottom with the thinner part of the wedge to directed to the center of the cell

The *exact* horizontal placement of both characters in both layouts is not
very important, it is correct in both layouts, but both characters can be
rendered by placing the glyph to the horizontal center in the horizontal
layout, or to the vertical middle in the vertical lyaout (even if both can't
change their position to the other side, this centering being possible for
small font sizes where the two strokes need extra spacing to be clearly
separated an not fused at their top where they start with a thicker bowl).

In summary, the position of the vertial glyph for U+301E should be moved to
the upper part (unless this is a legacy error in some CJK standard that will
need to be preserved; in that case, there should be a variant selector encoded
to allow this correction in the vertical layout, but I don't think it is
necessary, given the existing proposal for the Ideographic full stop in
vertical layout, which already use the horizontal centering like with the
double-width Latin full stop).

I wonder tow which rxtent this part of the document is normative; notably
because these are still representaive glyphs (but for a specific context): if
the glyphs break existing distinctions in the horizontal layout, these glyphs
should be corrected.

A basic test of the glyphs should compare the proposed glyphs by just
recomposing the horizontal glyph in four equal subsqares (only if the
horizontal glyph does not override the vertical middle separating subsquares 1
and 2 from subsquares 3 and 4, as it is the case for these characters here):

 +---+---+
 | 1 | 2 |
 +---+---+
 | 3 | 4 |
 +---+---+

and rearranging them logically (without rotation or mirroring) for the vertical layout as

 +---+---+
 | 3 | 1 |
 +---+---+
 | 4 | 2 |
 +---+---+

or by splitting the original glyph (similar in laout to tall half-width characters) as:

 +---+---+
 |   |   |
 | 1 | 2 |
 |   |   |
 +---+---+

to compose (with a 90° rotation clockwise plus a mirroring to preserve the
natural left to right direction of horizontal strokes in the new layout; with
thin terminating wedge still to the right, and heavy starting bowls to the
left)

 +-------+
 |   1   |
 +-------+
 |   2   |
 +-------+

Date/Time: Fri Jul 11 07:49:56 CDT 2014
Name: Shinyu Murakami
Report Type: Error Report
Opt Subject: PRI 278 (UTR 50): vertical layout of U+301E


Philippe Verdy already reported this problem:
> > Isn"t there an error in the positioning of the glyph presented for the 
> > vertical layout of U+301E (which is the same as U+301D);
> > U+301D REVERSED DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK		
> > U+301E DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK

I believe the vertical layout of U+301E must be same as U+301F, not U+301D.

  U+301F  LOW DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK

The general category of U+301E is Pe (Punctuation, close) which is same as U+301F,
and the general category of U+301D is Ps (Punctuation, open).
It seems obviously an error that the close punctuation U+301E has same layout as 
the open punctuation U+301D.

U+301E is not usually used in Japanese text. The legacy Japanese character set (JIS)
didn't have this character. U+301E was probably derived from the Traditional Chinese 
character set (Big5), and Traditional Chinese fonts such as MingLiU contain the
character U+301E with vertical glyph similar to the vertical glyph of U+301F in
Japanese fonts.

I found MS Mincho contains U+301E with wrong vertical glyph, same as UTR50's 
vertical layout of U+301E. The error was copied?

See the image in the tweet:
https://twitter.com/MurakamiShinyu/status/487522403988160512

Best regards,

Shinyu Murakami


Date/Time: Sun Jul 13 04:20:23 CDT 2014
Contact: murakami@antenna.co.jp
Name: Shinyu Murakami
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI 278 (UTR 50): U+3030 WAVY DASH should be vo=R, not Tr

> > 3030 Category 2 (Mirroring is required in addition to rotation.)

I don't understand why this (U+3030 WAVY DASH) is "Category 2" (why not 3?)
since all fonts except MS Gothic lack V glyphs in your table. Is it true that
mirroring is required in addition to rotation?

WAVY DASH 〰 is often used in Japanese comics and light novels. It is painful
for authors this character cannot be used without specifying "text-
orientation: sideways" or images have to be used instead. In fact, current
EPUB viewers supporting vertical text set upright this character (MVO=U is
implemented) and "text-orientation: sideways" is not yet implemented widely,
only solution today is using images :-(

I found in the real examples that the shape of WAVY DASH in vertical text is
simply rotated and not mirrored. See the examples:

おまえはもう死んでる……
なにィ〰〰!?
Image: http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/nwknews/imgs/f/9/f9b2570d.jpg
from http://blog.livedoor.jp/nwknews/archives/4119466.html

ここよ〰
Image: http://kamatatokyo.com/gen/features_hiroshima/images2/funairi_manga.gif
from http://kamatatokyo.com/hoge/hns-lite/?200512c&to=200512230#200512230

Please compare the shape of the WAVY DASH glyph in these examples with the glyph image shown 
in UTR50 draft's Table 4 (Glyph Changes for Vertical Orientation) 
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr50/#w1aac17b1
I doubt that the V image of WAVY DASH in Table 4 is correct (unnecessarily mirrored?).

Regards,

Shinyu Murakami
Antenna House 

Date/Time: Sun Jul 13 08:57:43 CDT 2014
Contact: murakami@antenna.co.jp
Name: Shinyu Murakami
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI 278 (UTR 50): U+00B6 is R and U+2016 is U, why not the opposite?

U  00A7  §  SECTION SIGN
R  00B6  ¶  PILCROW SIGN
U  2016  ‖  DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE
U  2020  †  DAGGER
U  2021  ‡  DOUBLE DAGGER

These characters have Unicode general category Po (Punctuation, other).
I understand that in UTR50 ambiguous characters in this category are 
basically vo=U unless there are special reasons for not doing so.

Is there special reasons for U+00B6 as R?  It seems unnatural to me 
that U+00B6 is R while other similar type characters are U.

For U+2016, in the other hand, I believe there are reasons to be vo=R.
All modern OpenType Japanese fonts have vertical glyph with 90 degrees 
rotated shape for this character.

If UTR50 defines vo=U for U+2016, upright posture is expected, but the 
rendering result will be rotated because the vertical glyph of the font 
is enabled.  This will cause confusion.

The problem of U+2016 was already discussed (but not resolved yet):

Vertical posture of U+2016 DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE
http://www.unicode.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=286


To solve the issues, I propose to change the vo values of U+00B6 and U+2016:

U  00B6  ¶  PILCROW SIGN
R  2016  ‖  DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE


Best regards,

Shinyu Murakami
Antenna House