bugFree UCS Outline Fonts - Bugs: bug #45441, g + combining macron below is...

 
 

bug #45441: g + combining macron below is poor, and a question about J with caron

Submitter:  Barry <finbaz>
Submitted:  Tue 30 Jun 2015 03:13:05 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  individual character(s) Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  letter positioning poor Status:  Need info
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  Stevan_White
Open/Closed:  Open Release:  * 2012-05-03
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Thu 02 Jul 2015 03:09:41 PM UTC, comment #6: 

It seems to me that they're placed badly in FreeMono (except Bold) and FreeSerif Italic, other typefaces have no problem. Tested in BabelPad.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Wed 01 Jul 2015 09:35:41 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Hi Barry,

About different forms of letters:  Au contraire -- it is indeed possible, by means of OpenType font features.  But this would surely be a great deal of work, and we are presently pressed for time.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Tue 30 Jun 2015 08:11:36 AM UTC, comment #4: 

Brilliant, Steve.
With the 20150628 build g̱ appears well, and without doing anything to PDF settings J̌ does now export properly to PDF.
I did not expect a solution so quickly. Thanks very much.

Hsing-yen He - I do not know why the pre-composed lower case form (ǰ) has a code point in the Unicode table (01F0) but the upper case form does not. It seems to have been missed by Unicode, and hence it is necessary at this time to use J + combining hacek/caron, with consequent problems in some fonts or programs.

Cheers.

Barry <finbaz>
Tue 30 Jun 2015 06:28:00 AM UTC, comment #3: 

Hi Steve,
and thanks for your very swift reply.

The reason for putting the diacritic below is for clarity and consistency.
Clarity: where it currently places it looks like g with stroke (U+01E5).
Consistency: it already places below the g in both bold and italic.

The difficulty would be avoided by using the pre-composed g+macron above (U+1E21) except that the more common placement to transliterate soft forms of Hebrew and Syriac letters g b d k p t is below, and that is how it might be received from others writing with other Unicode fonts, such as Times New Roman which places it clearly below.

Thanks for the link to the new build. I'll try that, and double check PDF setting concerning j+caron matter, and get back to you.

As to other forms of Syriac - don't worry. It is not possible to build in the Estrangelo, Serto, and Eastern scripts in one Unicode font as they are different forms of the same letters. My point was more appreciation for this great font that means now having to employ other fonts only when needing a Syriac form other than that in FreeSans. Previously I needed almost as many fonts as languages, which leads to formatting hassles in multilingual documents.

Barry <finbaz>
Tue 30 Jun 2015 06:09:27 AM UTC, comment #2: 

Well, J with hacek also used for transliteration of Mongolian language (i.e. Nicholas N. Poppe's transliteration). Furthermore, when I use BabelPad, this letter will become J + combining hacek when I switch it into uppercase.

Hsing-yen He <hammerandsickle>
Tue 30 Jun 2015 05:20:19 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Hi Barry,

Please explain the purpose of putting this diacritic below the (already very low) letter g.

A lot of changes have been made to the font in the past years.  I see a positioning anchor beneath the letter g now.  I'll send you a link to a recent build.  Please tell me which operating system you are using so I can assist you with installation.

I think the issue with the j is likewise already resolved.  Please check the new build.

You might double-check in Adope Reader Properties->Fonts that your PDF file contains the fonts you expect.  I don't have access to Word 2013.  Maybe look for a setting that "embeds" the original fonts.  Failing that, please send us a small sample PDF file.

As to other forms of Syriac, we can discuss that, but it might be problematic to do in a single font.  But give us more information, and we'll see what can be done.

Cheers!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Tue 30 Jun 2015 03:13:05 AM UTC, original submission:  

Lower case g + combining macron below (U+0331): in FreeSerif the macron does not place below the g but messily inside the loop in "regular" and in "bold & italic". However, in "italic" and in "bold" it does place below the loop.

Also, since Unicode has no pre-composed upper case J + caron (it has the lower case: ǰ, U+01F0) the combining caron (U+030C) must be used. In FreeSerif they combine properly, but when saving a MS Word 2013 document as PDF the caron shifts to half-way down the J. The combination in Times New Roman does save ok to PDF. I do not know if this is a bug in FreeSerif or in MS Word’s save as PDF function.

Due to a need for Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac within academic works I really appreciate FreeSerif, and on discovering it quickly adopted it as my preferred base font. I now need another font only for Syriac in Serto and Eastern forms. FreeSerif has achieved far better typographic consistency in my papers. The above problems were encountered when needing to provide transliterations.
Thanks for a great font.

Barry <finbaz>

 

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Attached Files
file #34752:  Segoe UI Historic vs. FreeSans.zip added by hammerandsickle (167KiB - application/zip - I found Windows 10 providing Syriac script support through Segoe UI Historic font, which performanced better than FreeSans. I think this will be a challenge for open-source typographic community. You can found text from here: https://bit.ly/1Uem6rG)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

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  • -email is unavailable- added by hammerandsickle (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by Stevan_White (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by finbaz (Submitted the item)
  • -email is unavailable- added by finbaz (g + combining macron below, and J + caron)
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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2015-08-27 hammerandsickle Attached File- Added Segoe UI Historic vs. FreeSans.zip, #34752
    2015-06-30 Stevan_White StatusNone Need info
        Assigned toNone Stevan_White
    2015-06-30 finbaz Carbon-Copy- Added finbaz

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