Where do you put the circumflex in /hcircumflex, and caron in /kcaron?

Cristóbal Henestrosa

I’ve seen these two approaches for /hcircumflex and /kcaron: 1) To put the diacritic at the top of the stem (as in Alegreya), or 2) Floating somewhere near to the visual center of the letter (as in Georgia or Palatino). And even mixed solutions, as in Athelas. I am not sure which one is better. What are your thoughts on this?

John Hudson

The h with circumflex is peculiar to Esperanto, and as I recall Esperantists prefer it with the mark optically centered on the full width of the letter, rather than above the stem. 

Igor Freiberger

I place centered over the ascenders and also include alternatives for both. The floating position centered on width is terribly ugly.

Andreas Stötzner

John Hudson

I recall mention, many years ago, of research that indicated centring marks on the width of letters is best for legibility, i.e. that people read diacritics more easily when the mark is in a regular and predictable position relative to the base.

Nested marks seem problematic as weight increases.

Andreas Stötzner

I just realise that I have not been consequent with this throughout. The circumflex-h really looks terrible:

that induces me to check the whole band of ascender letters with accents. Fortunately they are rare. f and l are the only hardship cases where one has no choice. The cicumflex of the h will move downwards next time, most certainly (now it looks like a drunkard).

the Welsh dot characters are a case of its own … working much better in a traditional style, which is not surprising.

John Hudson

Irish, not Welsh.

I think the nested marks generally look noisy, and are less clear than having the marks above the ascender height.

Andreas Stötzner

John Hudson said:

Irish, not Welsh.

yes of course. sorry.

Gaelic anyway 

Nick Shinn

Although it might seem that in placing lower case accents above the cap line they’ve lost their moorings and are floating away, bear in mind that in running text there will be cap accents at the same height.

Thomas Phinney

If the ascenders are taller than the caps—as is the case much of the time—then the accents over the ascenders may need to be higher.

John Hudson

I also make a point of using the flatter cap forms of above marks over lowercase ascenders. Among the oddities shown in Cristobál’s illustration is the inconsistency of mark height in Alegreya and Athelas.

Igor Freiberger

John: nested diacritics is a very good name. It's new for me. 

Nick: I dislike the centered diacritics not because how high they are, but because this set up lets an uneven, big blank area at right.

Thomas: another good point, I need to test these encounters a bit more.

John: I got the same suggestion from Denis Jacquerye some time ago and it's far better.

Andreas: is there something that does not look good in Andron? 😉

John Hudson

Igor

I dislike the centered diacritics not because how high they are, but because this set up lets an uneven, big blank area at right.

You mean the big blank area under the diacritic in e.g.

That blank area is part of the letter h, part of the pattern we recognise as h (that’s why I dislike nested diacritics sitting in that space). I take the view that the letter should be stable enough to carry the optically centred mark above, and particularly in smaller text sizes this positioning is helpful to reading. I can imagine a different solution for larger, display lettering.

Igor Freiberger

Of course, this area already exists, but it gets demarcated and highlighted with the diacritic. And, albeit you are objectively correct, I can't find the result good. Anyway, the ĥ is like the y with ogonek: no solution is really good.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

The letter ĥ is also used in Oniyan (Bassari) in Senegal following the 2005-987 Oniyan spelling decree. Some authors use h̃ instead as it represents a nasalized voiced fricative consonant [ɣ̃], h being voiced fricative [ɣ].

Besides being used in Skolt Sami with the wedge caron above or nested on k, the letter ǩ is used in Laz with a caron shaped like a prime or an acute and with a nested position, somewhat like the caron on d, l, t in Central European languages like Czech or Slovakian. For example in Lazuri.com material, Lazenstitu.com material, in the journal Gazete Noğa or in school manuals like Lazuri 5 published by the Turkish government in 2015. Interestingly they use ť as t with wedge caron.

Adolfo Jayme

The placement near the top of the ascender is easier to read to me. I find other placements very distracting.

Simon Cozens

While we're on the subject, any clues on ḣ? I'm trying to work out what to do with this Noto issue.

Thomas Phinney

The t with wedge caron, where the caron runs into the top of the t, is particularly troubling.

Cristóbal Henestrosa

Thank you all for your insights. It seems that there are different opinions on the matter.