Re: CHAT: An introduction

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 17:15:08 -0600, Scotto Hlad <scotto@...> wrote:
> Thanks for the difference between the cedilla and comma below the Romanian
> S. No intention of creating a fight there, everything I have makes the S
> with the comma under it look like a cedilla. This no doubt attributed to my
> need for new glasses.
No, more likely to inadequate fonts.

*In theory*, font rendering should have knowledge of the target
language and should choose appropriate glyphs (for example, choosing
between an s-cedilla and an s-comma shape for Turkish/Romanian, or
changing the angle of the accent on ó depending on whether the
language is Spanish or Polish, or possibly putting the dots on an Ä to
either side of the top rather than on top which is possible in German
typography but unusual, AIUI, in other languages).

However, this requires (a) that the font contain appropriate glyphs
and (b) that the font engine is sophisticated enough. In practice,
this isn't the case, so "smaller" languages just get the shaft and
have to make do with inadequate fonts. (Or even sometimes not-so-small
languages -- for example, the shape of the "66" quotation mark in
Microsoft's Courier New font is not suitable for German, where it's a
final quotation mark and I expect a // shape rather than a \\ shape if
there are no rounded portions.)

So what I usually see is that s-cedilla is shaped like s-cedilla
(perhaps because Turkey is a bigger market than Romania) but that
t-cedilla is shaped like t-comma (because there is no European
language that uses t-cedilla with a cedilla shape underneath in the
preferred glyph).

And users of the language have probably learned to resign themselves
to the bad typography since they have no clout with the font rendering
engine designers or type foundries, which is a shame. But they don't
have to like it; hence my suggestion that saying "s-cedilla is used in
Romanian" should be considered carefully. (Also, a distinction between
"characters" and "glyphs" is necessary here.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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