1. Should it be an identical glyph to period?
2. Should it be the same character width as period?
3. Should it be centred vertically on the cap height (with suitable “optical” adjustment)?
4. Where a type is “high- (or low-) waisted” in the caps, should it be aligned with the waist?
5. Where ascenders overshoot cap height, which should it be (vertically) centred on?
6. Where ascenders overshoot cap height, would it make sense to (vertically) align it with the ascender, and provide a “case” alternate aligned to the caps?
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And in dictionaries to indicate syllable breaks.
I often used it in all cap settings as a spacer, similar to the way people use the bar.
I believe that in Catalan, manuscripts are more often keyboarded with /l followed by /periodcentered, rather than using /ldot. With this in mind, I create a glyph “periodcentered.ldot” which substitutes in the local feature. AFAIK, the only drawback would be in a Catalan dictionary.
Following discussion with Catalan colleagues, I think it is best to provide either a {locl} alternate as Nick suggests, or ligate
l periodcentered -> ldot
The best height of the dot for Catalan is going to depend on the typeface, and the proportions of the x-height to the ascender height. Generally speaking, it is going to be somewhere around the mid-height of the l, but it should be looked at in sample words to determine what looks best for a particular design.
When tracking is beyond the “fail” amount, and the ligature ceases to be substituted, the spacing is even, but disproportionately large.
So, theoretically, the periodcentered can be aligned on lowercase to work as syllable separator, with a .case variant for use in all-caps, while the uni00B7 can be aligned to work with figures.
But that’s assuming precise semantic input in the encoded text stream.
To add to John’s comment: it’s also necessary that the localised periodcentered doesn’t take up much space because the distance between the two "l" in "l·l" should be similar to the one in "ll".
One further observation: a similar case exists in occitan where you might find the combinations s·h, n·h and l·h. They’d probably need a similarly localised glyph.
Right, a feature of this method is that no kerning is required, just adjust the sidebearings until width of the combination of glyphs = the ldot width.
But you will probably need separate “periodcentered.catalan” glyphs for UC, lc and small caps.
Exactly. The glyphs for UC and sc will be of zero width and have a negative left sidebearing.
I am Catalan, so I am fairly aware about that issue. Somehow, there are some linguistic misunderstandings on how l·l (in catalan, 'l geminada') should appear in the text.
I use identical design as period and I locate it optically centered according to both l·l. But position should be different in uppercase or smallcaps. So, I'd rather use periodcentered.case and periodcentered.smcp for those cases. If you are using ldot / Ldot / ldot.smcp, then you should arrange dot according to get a nice design for all combinations of 'l geminada'.
In Catalan the so called 'L geminada' used to be a single glyph in early typesetting. So I include within my font encoding a glyph called 'lgeminada' (for Uc, Lc and SC) and put it as a 'liga' feature for default substitution in the text. A 'locl' feature could be nice also.
I believe there is no standard way to deal with this. Since not many people cares about Catalan language, they do not consider this local issue.
As a design, the 'Lgeminada' should look as a double LL/ll but locating enough visual space between the l's, otherwise it will appear very bad in small sizes.
I use to give periodcentered some sidebearing value in case I decide to use it for other purposes in the text (as separation marks, for example).
If there is any question on this, I will be glad to offer some help.
⋅∙
Mathematical operators render on the math centerline, rather than the text baseline.
The distinction between middle dot and dot operator deserves special consideration. dot operator is preferred for mathematical use, where it signifies multiplication. This allows for rendering consistent with other mathematical operators, with unambiguous character properties and mathematical semantics. middle dot is a legacy punctuation mark, with multiple uses, and with quite variable layout in different fonts. For the typographical convention of a raised decimal point, in contexts where simple layout is the priority and where automated parsing of decimal expressions is not required, middle dot is the preferred representation
Menlo:
Cambria Math:
Georgia:
Apple Symbol:
Arial Unicode MS:
My own practice for typical text faces is to position the /periodcentred/ U+00B7 glyph near the mid-x-height, aligned with the hyphen. I position the larger /bullet/ U+2022 higher, typically aligned with the crossbar of the uppercase H, since the bullet is most often used before a sentence initial cap.
\setmathfont{STIX Two Math}
and equation \[ x\cdotp x\cdot x\bullet x\smblkcircle x\]
\smblkcircle
belongs to a series of black circles of various sizes.Notice that the vertical positioning of cdot relative to periodcentered (on any text on the current line) does not seem to be affected by the surrounding equations as suggests the following test:
(I did not check the specs). It is the whole line that moved down with the equation. Here I used Fourier (and three cdots).