I have a couple takes on this...

My first thought is that while the statement on Wikipedia may be true, it may have come about due to the lack of a dot-less "i" on early typesetting machines, thus forcing one or more tone accents to be added to a standard "i."

My second thought is that Romanization and transliteration systems are designed to preserve the intent of the language in written form, and to make doing so easier, not harder. When using modern fonts, using a dotted "i" with accents falls into the realm of making things harder, not easier. (Romanization is the term I use when the system is the primary method for representing the language in written form, and transliteration is the term I use when it is a method represent the native script of a language using a different script, such as using the Latin script to represent Japanese.)

Related to my second thought, consider Pinyin. It is the standard method of transliterating Chinese (in China), is sometimes seen with special forms of the "a" and "g" characters, along with a seemingly special form of the acute accent to represent the rising tone in which the bottom-left tip is heavier than the upper-right one. For the "a" and "g" forms, this convention follows the forms typically see in italic faces, although the face is upright. In any case, both of these convention-like characteristics clearly conspire to make Pinyin harder to use, thus violating one of the important attributes of a transliteration system.

I guess what I am trying to say, in a somewhat round-about way, is that the statement on Wikipedia may be true and false, for the reasons I stated above. I have the TCVN 5712:1993 in my office, which may shed some light on this issue, but I suspect that it uses the dot-less "i" form.

Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, CJKV Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
lunde@adobe.com

On a related note, do you know any online resources dealing specifically with Vietnamese diacritic design? Currently I'm referring to Diacritics Project and such useful tips as on this page. Specifically I'm wondering about the scale and weight of horn and hook.

I don't think I have ever seen Vietnamese text with the dot preserved when a tone mark is added. As Ken notes, there may at one stage have been technical limitations that did not support dotless i, leading to the belief among some users that the dot should be preserved. A parallel case to that would be the French typewriter that lacked uppercase accent, leading many people to the conclusion that accents are properly omitted on uppercase letters, despite the continuous evidence of 500 years of French typography and publishing. In these situations, I recommend looking for examples of older, handset typography, books from reputable publishers, and also good quality vernacular handlettering in signs etc. In the case of Vietnamese, you might also investigate what Alexandre de Rhodes SJ did with i when he invented the system.

Ken: Your best bet is to reference high-quality typefaces that Vietnamese support by design.

And sometimes solutions that show up can be quite different (uni1EBF, Minion Pro / Arial Unicode MS):

You can also look at SIL fonts. Here is from Gentium Basic. Charis and Doulos also have .VN glyphs for Vietnamese

Wow! Thanks for researching some more on this.

I wonder how these anomalies could have made it into such an important reference document. I'd be intrigued to see a scan.

In Michel's image of Gentium above it looks like some kind of language feature will do a glyph substitution to make the upper diacritics shrink for Vietnamese. But isn't it strange to have the full size version at all, or is there some other language that would use u+1EA5 and u+1EA7?

In Michel’s image of Gentium above it looks like some kind of language feature will do a glyph substitution to make the upper diacritics shrink for Vietnamese.

Yes, for the script latn here are some relevant glyphs associated to the languages dflt (default) and VIT (Vietnamese).

Another interesting thing is that the ligature sub i acutecomb by iacute is a required ligature in Charis and Doulos. One might have hoped to get a "i" with a dot and an acute with that combination, but that does not work either (I can't get it with Gentium either).

Michel

Ken, thank you very much for the scans.

 
Ben: But isn’t it strange to have the full size version at all, or is there some other language that would use u+1EA5 and u+1EA7?

This beats me too. I can’t figure out what the advantage is of assigning a Unicode code point to what is basically a ‘wrong’ or at least an unexpected character representation, and the offering of alternative ‘correct’ versions. I could well be overlooking something here though, so perhaps someone can explain?

John, thanks for the clear explanation. It is an interesting approach in the SIL fonts.

I am participating on the OT list since early this year, so I actually did not know about Adam’s idea concerning a generic language system tag.

This is extremely interesting.

I would suggest that even if we [have to] give in to the Vietnamese script being ridiculously Latinized*, we might still liberate it from the yoke of Latinized typographic conventions.

* BTW, how is the Nôm revival going?

Hoang, I would ask that you please start a new thread with the facts and opinions you express above, so we can try to raise Vietnamese typesetting to the next level.

hhp

Thanks, Hoang. You cannot separate type design from language, and basic knowledge of how the Vietnamese alphabet works is essential for good design.

I have some experience of transcribing Vietnamese proper names into the Korean alphabet, so I am familiar with the basic letters used in Vietnamese. Korean doesn't use tones, so we ignore the accents that mark tones altogether, just as tonal marks in Pinyin are usually ignored for transcribing Chinese proper names for the English language. But the transcription table between Vietnamese and Korean treats each of the basic Vietnamese letters separately, even those that look like accented variations of the same Latin letter. For instance, the Vietnamese "o" and "o horn" map onto different vowels in Korean.

I am interested to hear you opinions on the accents in other designs that support Vietnamese, such as the SIL typefaces that you can see samples of in this thread. Are they acceptable? Could they be improved?

Sorry to go slightly off-topic, but I doubt that the diacritics and special characters used in scholarly transcriptions of languages that don't use the Latin script will catch on in everyday use.

It's somewhat different for languages that use Latin-based scripts, including Vietnamese—in those cases, there exist unambiguous local spellings like Málaga, Düsseldorf, Chişinău, and Điện Biên Phủ. But there tend to be competing systems of transcriptions for languages that don't use the Latin script, and not everyone can be expected to easily determine which spelling is the most scientific. For everyday use it ultimately boils down to simplicity.

Everyday use entails simplifying and ignoring important distinctions in the original language. Speakers of English or Korean will not feel the need to distinguish between 王 Wa2ng and 汪 Wa1ng when they are speaking their own language (indeed, the idea of tones distinguishing syllables will be foreign to most), so why go through the trouble of marking them differently, unless we assume a specialized audience?