From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 13:17:32 EDT
Kent Karlsson wrote:
> >... Like it or not, superscript e *is* the
> > same diacritic
> > that later become "¨", so there is absolutely no violation of
> > the Unicode
> > standard. Of course, this only applies German.
>
> Font makers, please do not meddle with the authors intent
> (as reflected in the text of the document!). Just as it
> is inappropriate for font makers to use an ø glyph for ö
> (they are "the same", just slightly different derivations
> from "o^e"), it is just as inappropriate for font makers to
> use a "o^e" glyph for ö (by default in a Unicode font). Though
> in some sense the "same" they are still different enough for
> authors to care, and it is up to the document author/editor
> to decide, not the font maker.
It is certainly up to the author of the document to decide.
But, as I explained more at length in my reply to Marc, the are two
different approaches for deciding this:
1. When this decision is a matter of *content* (as may be the case when
writing about linguistics, to differentiate spellings with "o^e" from
spellings with ö), it is more appropriate to make the difference at the
*encoding* level, by using the appropriate code point.
2. When this decision is only a matter of *presentation*, it is more
appropriate to make the difference by using a font which uses the desired
glyph for the normal "¨".
> If the "umlaut" to "overscript e" transformation is put under
> this feature for some fonts, I see no major reason to complain...
> (As others have noted, it does not really work for the long s,
> unless the language is labelled 'en'...)
And, of course, in an ideal word option 2 will be done by switching a font
feature, rather than switching to an ad-hoc font. This makes it possible for
font designers to provide a single font which covers both needs. But this is
just optimization, not compliance!
_ Marco
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