Font-related problem for linguists

[Peter Kahrel]

Andrew,

A surprise indeed, I hadn't realised that those new Microsoft fonts had 
those sets, thanks for pointing that out. And proper italics, too. But 
Don's problem of the slanted a remains because it doesn't have a Unicode 
position.


On 01.03.2012 12:56, Spencer, Andrew J wrote:
> Don, Peter,
>
> Having recommended Charis SIL to students and colleagues I discovered
> the Unicode-related problems Don mentions, including the problem of
> slanted/italic 'ash' (æ), which comes out as italic oe ligature (œ).
>
> Somewhat to my surprise, I find that MicroSoft's recent font Cambria
> has rather better IPA support, at least in this respect. It provides
> slanted versions for the complete IPA character set, including
> superscripts such as aspiration. Has anyone encountered any problems
> with Cambria IPA that I'm unaware of?
>
> Of course, the other alternative is to use LaTeX with the TIPA
> package. I can put all the IPA symbols into slanted mode provided I
> use a supported font (Times New Roman - it doesn't necessarily work
> with other fonts), and XeTeX users can presumably just input Cambria
> if they want. However, LaTeX doesn't help if you need to share files
> with non-LaTeX users, of course.
>
>
> Andrew
> *************************************************
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on
> behalf of Peter Kahrel [kahrel at KAHREL.PLUS.COM]
> Sent: 01 March 2012 12:30
> To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: Font-related problem for linguists
>
> Don,
>
> Not a silly question at all: it's a common problem. The trouble is 
> that
> a and its 'slanted' equivalent have no Unicode position. Charis's
> behaviour to italicise a as a slanted is an annoying feature, but
> designed and expected. You should appeal to the Unicode consortium
> (www.unicode.org), not to SIL, so that type foundries (such as SIL) 
> can
> place the character somewhere. (Such a request should be pending but 
> it
> won't harm if you remind the consortium: the more requests, the 
> quicker
> the fix.)
>
> As you said, in the meantime you can create a font with a and its
> slanted equivalent (if you know how). Use that for your own purposes.
> Use a position from the Private Use range, say E000. Then when you
> submit a text for publication, tell the editor that E000 represents a
> and its slanted version, and give them your font. If the typesetters
> can't deal with that, the publisher should find someone else.
>
> Peter

-- 
Peter Kahrel

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