Re: Turned Capital letter L (pointing to the left, with serifs)

From: Asmus Freytag (t) <asmus-inc_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 08:54:18 -0800

Excellent!
Looks like a candidate character for encoding. I’m sure I have some examples of good font designs for the old character in one of my books. 

Admitting that a Greek letter inherently makes more sense than an "et" as a variable name, I would still need to understand why "pi" would make a sensible mnemonic choice for the variable in Gauss' treatise, before being confident that we've made the correct identification. The more so, as the use of non-cursive pi for "perihelion" in the same work is clearly mnemonic.

A./

On 4 Jan 2016, at 15:38, Raymond Mercier <raymond@almanach.co.uk> wrote:

The sign described as like 7 is surely a cursive form of π. The form used by Gauss (Disquisitio de elementis ellipticis Palladis) is much the same as that shown in manuals of Greek Palaeography as a cursive π. This is given by E.P. Thompson in two works, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, Oxford, 1912, p.83, and  A Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography, Chicago, 1975, p. 95.
Raymond Mercier
<Pi_Abbrev.jpg><GaussPallas_21.jpg>

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

Received on Mon Jan 04 2016 - 10:55:52 CST