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U+1E23 : LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH DOT ABOVE (ḣ) should have the dot in a different place #30
Comments
I'm not convinced by this. Most fonts I can find have it centered and above, similar to what we do in Noto Serif. This includes some fonts that I really value for their scholarship - if I was going to be transliterating Hebrew (which is what I think ḣ is used for), I would reach for either the Brill typeface or Gentium, both of which do what we do. (In other words, the problem might be that Noto Sans has the dot in the wrong place...) It may be that there is not necessarily a "right" answer here. |
There isn’t a right answer: there is too much variety in dot mark positioning in writing systems and scholarly transcription systems. Dots are used for lot of different purposes: not only to transcribe phonemes but also as textual marks to indicate e.g. unclear readings or damaged letters in inscriptions. Some positioning is specific to individual letters for particular languages, e.g. that Gaelic b with a nested dot, while other positioning is general and systematic. So, for example, the handling of dots on Greek letters in the Brill fonts is different from that on Latin letters, because Brill’s primary use of dots in Greek scholarship is textual rather than linguistic. |
Thank you. I think I'm going to close this, then. It doesn't even sound like it's particularly important that things are consistent between families. (And no I won't do a stylistic set but someone else can send me a PR if they really want it.) My dream is that one day there will be a database which links Unicode codepoints (particularly for those early-encoded ones for which there was no formal proposal) with their uses and some examples, which would help with this kind of decision. It took me long enough to find out that ḣ was used in Hebrew transcription, and even longer to find out that there weren't any specific expectations of how that ought to look. |
That was the idea behind ScriptSource but it seems mostly stalled. It is something that needs to be a full-time job for at least one person. @moyogo always seems to have the most extensive information of this kind. |
Having a nested dot on b is a requirement of Gaelic script, it is not a requirement of Latin script otherwise where its position is arbitary, each designer or user can have a different preference. Since ḃ, ḋ, ḣ, k̇ are used in ISO 259 and ISO 259-2 for Hebrew romanization, it would better for them to have the same dot positioning in that context. Those ISO documents have centered dots but that may not be normative. There is no doubt some users will complain if the dots of ḃ, ḋ are moved, and some other users will complain if the dots on ḣ, k̇ are moved. The ḋ and ḣ are used in Harari Latin alphabet, @andjc’s Harari Harfi (2011) used centered dots. Personally, I’d center the dot above the letter like I’d center other top diacritics. |
Defect Report
Title
U+1E23 : LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH DOT ABOVE (ḣ) should have the dot in a different place
Font
NotoSerif-Regular.ttf
Where the font came from, and when
Preinstalled on Pop!_OS 20.10
Font Version
2.002
OS name and version
Pop!_OS 20.10
Issue
The dot on U+1E23 : LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH DOT ABOVE (ḣ) should either be above the H's ascender (see fig. 1) or integrated next to it as is the case with U+1E03 : LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH DOT ABOVE (ḃ) (see fig. 2)
Character data
U+1E23
Screenshot
Fig. 1: U+1E23 in the fonts Ubuntu and Cascadia Code
Fig. 2: U+1E03 in Noto Serif
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