The Mysteries of the Unicode Table

John Hudson

Note that the legacy diacritical marks (see under the heading Legacy Marks) included in Unicode are now primarily useful for discussing the marks themselves. I.e, I can type ˚ (U+02DA) when I talk about the ring accent, instead of having to type a space before the combining ring above (U+030A) for a similar result:  ̊ 

A distinction should be made between legacy spacing accents such as U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT and the spacing modifier signs in the 02XX block. The latter are used in phonetics.

Richard Fink

 Chris Lozos said:

No, Richard, they were just copies ;-)

Yet another tribute band - a nickel a piece.   

Ray Larabie

Greek question: φ vs ψ (phi vs psi)

Does it look better if the vertical strokes start at the same height? Assuming it's the style of φ that has a vertical stroke, not the curly type. From looking at other fonts it seems pretty arbitrary. To my non-Greek eye, it looks better when they match.Cyrillic question: ф vs dp (ef vs dp)I've noticed that in many contemporary Cyrillic typefaces, a single loop ф is favored over the type that looks like a dp collision. What sort of typeface suits each style? Old-fashioned, ultra-modern, script, handwriting etc.

Chris Lozos

Does it look better if the vertical strokes start at the same height?

Greek is not to vertically benchmarked so rigidly as Latin.  The question is more of balance than alignment.  Think of a Bach phrase compared to a Sousa march.  They are both in an order but not the same one.

John Hudson

Ray:

Cyrillic question: ф vs dp (ef vs dp)
I've noticed that in many contemporary Cyrillic typefaces, a single loop ф is favored over the type that looks like a dp collision. What sort of typeface suits each style? Old-fashioned, ultra-modern, script, handwriting etc.

Hopefully Maxim will chime in with a fuller and more nuanced explanation, but in the meantime:

Idiomatically, the double-bowl ф works best in types with a vertical axis and an expansion stroke model (neoclassical/transitional and romantic/didone). The single bowl ф works better in the neo-renaissance humanist style.

In sans serif types, this feature doesn't always translate in the same way that didone -> grotesque sans and renaissance -> humanist sans features of Latin script tend to. There are well known early 20th Century Russian grotesques with a single-bowl ф, often quite squarish. So that's the route I took with Helvetica World, despite the stroke construction of Helvetica suggesting a low-contrast didone structure. See page 22 of my Serebro Nabora presentation.

Nick Shinn

Ray, it doesn’t make any difference to readers.

Those who know type generally like to see new faces which are close to existing styles conform to the familiar letter shapes. So some research is necessary if you want to please that audience.

Otherwise, and especially if you are designing a face with some novel personality, make both variants and judge for yourself which “reads” best in native language setting.

George Thomas

@Frode Bo Helland -- Unicode says it is used in Livonian; uni0232 and uni0233.

George Thomas

Michael Everson shows it in parens, and writes: "Letters in (parentheses) are fundamental letters normal to the alphabet of a languages, used in writing native or naturalized (non-foreign) words, but which are, in the sources, interfiled with the base letter."

Geonames.de shows the base /Y only, in parens; other sources don't show the base letter.

KP Mawhood

System of Scansion
In 2-level notation, if the classical nonictus (metrical breve) uses uni23D1, what is the unicode value for the classical Ictus? Is it a "horizontal scan"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion#2-level_notations

John Hudson

I believe the en dash character is typically used for the classical ictus. I know when I was designing the Brill type, I coordinated the width and height of U+23D1 with the en dash for this reason.

Ray Larabie

♾

What's permanent paper?
267E permanent paper symbol.

Khaled Hosny

Seems to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper

Kent Lew

Ray — Here’s what typical usage looks like:



That language is standardized, as indicated in the Wikipedia article Khaled linked to.

Incidentally, we included this character in Miller Text when it was expanded a few years ago, since Matthew had already drawn it at the special request of someone (possibly Will Powers?). I’ve taken to including it in my own designs now also, given my target market.

Igor Freiberger

There is a second use for the permanent paper sign. Organizations with documental policy or adopting ISO 9xxx standards need to indicate the validate of a given document or for how many years it should be keeped. Those destined to permanent use or archive could receive the permanent paper sign.