Cyrillic extension cost

JoyceKetterer

I think you guys are all being way to hard on Google.  What you're describing is the natural outgrowth of a permanent beta mentality.  I like that their fonts are in different states of doneness.  We can't do this ourselves because we're stuck in a situation where it's hard to update the end user's files.  If we could just push updates like google can we'd totally release things in a more embryonic state and then allocate resources based on popularity.  It drives me crazy how much we need to invest in a font before we have a clue if other if it will even get used.

Maxim Zhukov

Cory Maylett said:

Of course, if you find a native Russian speaker, he or she will likely give you a very different take on things than a Serb.

Not necessarily… At least Jovica Veljović and I seem to be on the same wavelength.

Maxim Zhukov

Nick Shinn said:

Is there any reason Cyrillic and Greek should be more conventional than Latin?

No.

Thomas Phinney

But also no reason they should be *less* conventional than the Latin in the same typeface. No? That is always the risk when doing design for an area you are less familiar with.

Maxim Zhukov

Thomas Phinney said:

But also no reason they should be *less* conventional than the Latin in the same typeface. No?

Yes… Come to think of it, every design relying on a set of conventions—common or unfamiliar—is a balancing act, an attempt to slide between the Scylla of dogmatism, and Charybdis of nihilism.

Cory Maylett

Nick Shinn said:

One pitfall in relying on existing typefaces for guidance in Cyrillic is that so many of those typefaces have been designed by westerners who have relied on other westerners' work for guidance.

Is there any reason Cyrillic and Greek should be more conventional than Latin?

No, not at all. I have no objections to challenging conventions, but that's not what I referred to. Instead, I was mentioning the westernization of non-western typefaces.

In principle, I have no issues with western-looking glyphs in any alphabet. But when we have more western type designers designing non-western typefaces than we have native users of those alphabets designing them, it might be worth considering the inadvertent influence western aesthetic biases and conventions might have.

This isn't one of my big concerns where I have strong feelings. I'm just suggesting that it's worth considering it as a potential pitfall when designing a typeface for an alphabet that one is not entirely familiar with.