Re: "Proposed IPA" characters not in Unicode

(Hell, I'm back on this list for the time being. I meant to rejoin
some time ago, but my subscription request never was processed and I
forgot. So I've tried from a different address)

On 1/18/07, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
...
> I don't have it with me, but I'll host it tonight. I'd actually be
> interested in discovering the font
> it uses. It's a pretty standard though attractve Roman, and the small
> pieces of italic have a slight
> whiff of Zapf Chancery about them -- it works surprisingly well.
If it's the one from the Wikipedia (and it sounds like it), then it's
Gentium, a SIL font.

...
> Yeah. CXS is organic, which is a huge strength, but it makes it hard
> to systematize it.
Unfortunately the X-Sampa it was based on wasn't exactly systematic.
It had some themes, but they couldn't be relied upon...

...
> > > Should I just ignore them unless and until I need to
> > > use them?
> >
> > You mean if you should create a font for them?
>
> That's an option, for sure. The Freemono/Freesans/etc family is GPL or
> FDL or something, right? Do I
> recall the new-incarnation SIL family being Open Source, too?
Almost every font that's distributed with normal GNU/Linux distros can
be modified, but they may require changing the name. SIL fonts are
also modifiable, I'm not sure if you need to change the name on them
or not... Bitstream's Vera families are modifiable, but require name
changes; the DejaVu derivatives (which are the default sans fonts in
Debian and Ubuntu) contain many more characters and can be modified
without changing the name. Junicode is a bookish GPL font intended for
mediaeval scholarship, and contains the complete IPA. (I have a
modified form of Junicode you can have if you want which uses
Gentium-style IPA characters, e.g. instead of ɯ being a turned m, it's
ɯ:uu as w:vv, and defaults to IPA/Norse style eth instead of the Old
English one ... it's also a bit out of sync with the current version
of Junicode, which has a full greek alphabet; but my version contains
IPA-style greek letters.)

> I could dump them in the Private Use Area in the BMP for now...
Well, obviously Gentium has them based on that chart, so I'd see what
it's done & be compatible if you don't want to use it (I've never much
liked the font, which is why I've modified Junicode).

--
Tristan.

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