Tcomma and Tcedilla

I'm a little confused about /Tcomma and /Tcedilla

According to Adobe Latin 3:
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/latin_charsets/Adobe_Latin_3.html
UnicodeCharacterNameDescription
0162Ţ TcommaaccentLATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH CEDILLA
021AȚuni021ALATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH COMMA BELOW
Why are they are using the /Tcommaaccent "name" for the cedilla glyph? Is there any reason for that? or it's just a bug?

When consulting the Unicode chart, I see "commas" on both glyphs...
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/162/index.htm
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/21a/index.htm
The only difference is that the first shows a Sans font, and the second one shows a Serif font.

So far I have been using:

/uni0162 0162 for Tcedilla
/uni021A 021A for Tcomma

/uni0163 0163 for tcedilla
/uni021B 021B for tcomma

/uni015E 015E for Scedilla
/uni0218 0218 for Scomma

/uni015F 015F for scedilla
/uni0219 0219 for scomma

Is that Ok? Anyone can confirm/clarify?
Thanks in advance

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Comments

  • Here's a blog post from a Romanian point of view on Romanian diacritic marks (with some possible history of the changes):
    http://kitblog.com/2008/10/romanian_diacritic_marks.html
  • John HudsonJohn Hudson Posts: 2,955
    Thanks for the link, Jeff. I'd not seen that page before; it is very good. Just a pity it isn't bilingual: I'd love to know the Romanian word for clusterfuck.
  • Also, Moldavian.
  • Pablo, this is what you need to do to implement the ROM/MOL locl feature in Glyphs.
  • Thanks to all of you!
  • Nick ShinnNick Shinn Posts: 2,131
    The best design solution is to make the commaaccent and cedilla identical.
    I keep meaning to do that, but always end up with the usual cedilla already implemented by the time I get around to the commaaccent.
  • edited April 2013
    This is a mess.

    Some Romanian/Moldovan speakers say they do not want the locl feature substituting the cedilla form to the comma form. This kind of substitution only extends the confusion between ţ and ț or ş and ș, it only solves what the characters look like not what they actually are (which is bent on breaking something at some point or another).

    In AGLFN 1.7 there is no tcommaaccent nor scommaaccent anymore, only uni-names.
    See http://sourceforge.net/projects/aglfn.adobe/files/ with the comment in aglfn.txt:
    - removed mappings for commaaccent names. These should now be assigned "uni" names.

    For the Baltic cedilla letters with commas, they are also used in other languages, transcription systems or translitteration systems where a proper cedilla is required.

    Having the comma below and cedilla identical seems nice on paper, but doesn't really help identify characters which is important on the computer.
  • edited April 2013
    At least on a Mac, it is not possible to type the old codes (S/s/T/tcedilla, 015* and 016*) anymore. You can only type the new ones (S/s/T/tcommaaccent, 021*). I assume it’s similar for (newer versions of) Windows. The old codes are still in widespread use on Romanian websites though. But my hope is that their use will fade out over time.
  • John HudsonJohn Hudson Posts: 2,955
    Yes, newer versions of the Windows 'Romanian (Standard)' keyboard use the new comma accent characters; however, the older keyboard is still available, identified as the 'Romanian (Legacy)' keyboard.
  • John HudsonJohn Hudson Posts: 2,955
    edited April 2013
    For the Baltic cedilla letters with commas, they are also used in other languages, transcription systems or translitteration systems where a proper cedilla is required.
    Do you have specific languages or transcription systems in mind?

    In a European context, I've not found any instances in which these characters should be displayed with a cedilla, and for the most part font developers are making Latin fonts for European language support. It's also worth noting that Unicode explicitly annotates these characters as 'Latvian', and the 'WITH CEDILLA' naming is acknowledged as incorrect (but cannot be changed because Unicode character names are normative and covered by stability agreements).
  • Marshallese uses n and l with cedilla along with m and o with cedilla.
    In Unicode these decompose to base letters with combining cedilla, not with combining comma below. It is not a naming mistake but a blurry unification of the comma below with the cedilla, like it was for t and s with comma below or cedilla. It’s only in Version 3.0 that some cedillas were changed to look like commas to accomodate Latvian and Livonian.
    See http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13037r-cedillas-and-commas-below.pdf it's publicly available now.

    Some ISO and DIN transliterations use the cedilla and sometimes the comma with d, n, t, k, etc., in those transliterations diacritics are supposed to look like what they are otherwise you don’t know what you're transliterating anymore.
  • John HudsonJohn Hudson Posts: 2,955
    edited April 2013
    It is not a naming mistake but a blurry unification of the comma below with the cedilla, like it was for t and s with comma below or cedilla.
    The situation is a little different in that Unicode both annotates the characters as being for Latvian and, as you note, now presents them in the charts as being with the comma diacritic form. So, yes, it is a unification problem, but one that results in both a naming mistake and a canonical decomposition mistake; this is openly acknowledged by UTC members. Unlike the Turkish/Romanian situation, in this case Unicode has already explicitly identified some 'WITH CEDILLA' characters as correct encoding for Latvian (although annotations are informative, not normative), i.e. they have accepted that the characters are misnamed for their preferred display and major language use. Disunification would be even messier than that for Romanian.

    Thanks for reminding me of the Marshallese use, and of Eric Muller's memorandum.
  • Yes, it’s both a naming and unification mistake, I was really disagreeing with which comes first since they decompose to what the names say.
    Unicode inherited the problem from previous ISO/IEC 8859-4 or -10, ECMA-94 or-144, or code pages where there characters with cedilla in their names had cedilla sometimes and comma below other times in the reference documents.

    Disunification for Romanian was done poorly, doing the right thing the wrong way or at the wrong time doesn’t help.
  • edited April 2013
    @Pablo: the Unicode charts are at http://www.unicode.org/charts
    What you looked at was Fileformat.info which show what it finds in some fonts, sometimes it’s right but sometimes it’s wrong.
  • Thoughts on this note from Wes Adams about comma accent?
    In Romania I have it on authority that they prefer them connected because they are 'part of the letter' and no afterthought. […] I think that's the rub in faces where it's a comma and not more of a cedilla. I could well be wrong about this, they prefer joined.
  • I've noticed that in many fonts, the comma accent is turned 90 degrees fir all accented letters except S and T. Mainly these are letters from Latvian or Lithuanian. So am I right that it's ok to use rotated comma accent for R, L, N, etc. but not for S and T?
  • Wes was replying to a thread about ogoneks. I'm not sure why he brought up Romanian... I think he just got confused.
  • Adam LaddAdam Ladd Posts: 250
    edited June 2019
    I've been coming across more fonts that use a comma style design (both attached and detached to the letter) for the cedilla accent and do not appear to include a "traditional(?)" cedilla as well. Is this a design choice or acceptable to readers?
  • Thomas PhinneyThomas Phinney Posts: 2,732
    What I have seen in this vein seems like a hybrid in-between accent of some sort.

    (Whether it is acceptable (and acceptable to whom?) is another question....)
  • Vasil StanevVasil Stanev Posts: 759
    edited June 2019
    attached document
    Wow, I have completely missed this gem! It's quite comprehensive and it warms my heart to see I always did the design right. :smile:
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