Adam Stanislav recently said:
> Here is a question about dotless i, by the way: It has been stated that it
> is a true character because it is used in Turkish. I would like to know if
> *that* was the reason Adobe has been including it in every font. I have
> my suspicion that Adobe included it in their original PS fonts precisely
> because they felt the need to be able to create the letter i with any
> diacritic possible, not because it also happened to be a Turkish
> character. (And please do not interpret this as being negative about
> Adobe, I happen to think very highly about Adobe.)
On the RISC OS font system there is a feature for constructing characters by
combining others. This is commonly used for making accented characters. Of
course the i loses its dot so many font vendors in the RISC OS market have
put a dotless i in an unused spot just for this purpose.
Talking of fonts, I have just looked out a reference to Gottfried Zedler's
work on the DK-type font used by Gutenberg in the 36-line Bible. The font
has i and j both with and without dots, as well as with what I think is a
tilde on top. (As an abbreviation mark not an accent.) I don't have access
to a copy of that Bible so I don't know how they are used. Does this count
as printed evidence of the character's existance? (Especially since letters
with accents seem to be separate sorts in the font. There is also something
between h and i on the picture which looks like the h but with a dot over
the right side - this may be the fi ligature. The ff and fl ligatures are
with f in the picture.)
Tim
-- Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer
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