Capital Eng

scannerlicker
scannerlicker Posts: 18
in Type Design Technique & Theory
Hey, everyone!

I'm a bit confused with the formal aspects of the capital Eng (U+014A). So it has two forms, one based on the lowercase n, the other one on the uppercase N.

In previous typefaces, I'd solve this based on contrast: the j-like hook doesn't work very well with the N version with a high contrast, although it's still doable.

But on further reading, the preference of shape for one or the other seems to be cultural (according to wiki, Sami-speaking cultures prefer the the N-form, while African languages that use the Eng prefer a n-form (or rotated G, in some cases).

So, two questions: should these flavours be localized, or is any one of these forms intelligible?

Thank you in advance!
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Comments

  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 637
    If you plan on supporting African languages, it should definitely be localized.
  • scannerlicker
    scannerlicker Posts: 18
    André G. Isaak said:
    If you plan on supporting African languages, it should definitely be localized.
    But since there are a lot less Sami languages than the rest, shouldn't the non-Sami be default? 
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 1,020
    If a font does indeed provide for African languages, then I think it does makes sense to have the capital “nj” form as the default, and localize for the relevant Sami languages.

    But to adequately cover African languages, one needs several less common characters — such as ɓɗɖɲƴ, just to show a few.

    Extended Latin character sets that cover the majority of European languages will easily cover three of the four Latin-using Sami languages with the simple inclusion of ŋ. If the char set is primarily aimed at that standard target, then I think it makes sense to have the “NJ” form as the default.

    If you want to provide a capital “nj” form for those few African languages that can get by with just the ŋ and not the rest of the pan-African set, I would be more inclined to make it the alternate.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,467
    edited October 2017
    But since there are a lot less Sami languages than the rest, shouldn't the non-Sami be default?
    I really think so. I looked into it and found some Sámi websites which used fonts using the nj form. There aren't many but one of them even had Futura embedded for headlines which had the nj form...someone went out of their way to include it?

    Sámi people have probably been exposed to 30 years of Arial and other fonts which use that form. Unless there's a current survey of the speakers of these endangered languages proving that they're truly revolted by the nj form, I'm going to assume they're not too fussed. And perhaps some of them even prefer the nj form.
    But to adequately cover African languages, one needs several less common characters — such as ɓɗɖɲƴ, just to show a few.
    It's true, that more characters can be added to support Latin-based African alphabets. The Pan-Nigerian alphabet probably isn't used in day-to-day life and doesn't affect the usefulness of Ŋ.

    Pan Nigerian alphabet thread
  • Igor Freiberger
    Igor Freiberger Posts: 299
    edited October 2017
    A complete support for African languages should consider three variations for Eng (plus the European one):



    To take the first variant as the default is a logical idea. I will adopt this criteria.
    The two documents attached provide a valuable guidance to African localizations.

  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,027
    edited October 2017
    .
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,467
    @Igor Freiberger
    Very interesting. It's too bad africanlocalisation.net is gone, I'd like to learn more.
  • Tofu Type Foundry
    Tofu Type Foundry Posts: 70
    @Ray Larabie I’m not sure if it’s the same site as it was in 2017, but https://africanlocalisation.net/ is currently working. The way information is sorted feels a tad chaotic, though.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,536
    I am currently struggling with how best to handle this in a font that supports both African orthographies and North American Indigenous ones. The latter use the N form of Eng, and there are significant numbers of languages in both Africa and North America that use this letter. So which should be default in the font, and how many langsys entries am I going to need to localisation? Hmm.
  • mitradranirban
    mitradranirban Posts: 103
    I have a font which supports African languages and I now want to add North American indigenous language support in it. Do having localized Eng as suggested by  Christoph Koeberlin will be sufficient for that? 
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,536
    Do having localized Eng as suggested by  Christoph Koeberlin will be sufficient for that? 
    Christoph’s notes on the Eng only cover African vs European use of uppercase Eng. In Europe, use of Eng is limited to Sami language alphabets of northern Scandinavia, so it is easy to make one of the African forms the default glyph, and then use the locl feature to substitute the European form for Sami language system tags.

    The issue for African vs North American use of uppercase Eng is much more complicated, because there are lots of North American indigenous languages, and not all of them yet have unambiguous OpenType Layout langsys tags defined. So if one makes an African form the default glyph, locl feature implementation for North American languages is difficult. I am hoping it will become easier as a result of some current work being done to better document the North American orthographies, and to review the mapping of ISO language tags to OTL langsys tags. But at the moment my inclinations are either

    A) Make separate fonts for African and North American languages, with different defaults; or

    B) Make the North American forms the default, and add locl entries for African languages, since those are better documented and reflected in OTL langsys tags.

    Option (A) is the more robust solution.

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