Font-related problem for linguists

[Don Killian]

Why is changing Unicode not an option?

There are two distinct symbols in the IPA, a (open unrounded front 
vowel) and ɑ (open unrounded back vowel). When IPA was introduced into 
Unicode, a character position was created for ɑ (U+0251), but not for 
the front vowel a.  Instead, Unicode reused the normal latin small 
letter a, and as an unfortunate coincidence, italic latin a resembles 
roman ɑ.

There are two potential solutions.

One is for typographers to create fonts where italic versions of a and ɑ 
look different.  This then means that italicized English and other 
Metatext languages will also do the same, if you don't change the font 
for those, but I don't think this should be too upsetting for people in 
general, and I do see this as a potential solution, particularly in the 
short term.

However, I do see a solution from Unicode as well.  It is not to apply 
for a separate italic symbol, which I agree is not sensible.

Instead, we should have a character to represent the open unrounded 
front vowel a, so that typographers can specify its italic shape to not 
resemble ɑ, and small latin a can still resemble ɑ in italics if needed. 
  Despite the long list of already existing "a"s, I don't see them as 
sufficient, and it shouldn't be a problem to add a character to the IPA 
extensions.  Unicode has done something similar with U+0067 g and U+0261 
ɡ (and numerous other examples), which also resemble each other, so it 
wouldn't be the first time.

In fact this should have been done which IPA was added to Unicode in the 
first place, instead of taking a shortcut with the normal latin small 
letter a.

Your argument could very well be used here identically:

 > From the perspective of UNICODE, the "a" and "ɑ" are simply two
 > different characters. If you put them in italics, they are still two
 > different characters (even if they might look similar)

 From the perspective of a linguist, a (small latin a) and a (front open 
unrounded vowel) are simply two different characters, even if they might 
look similar. They also deserve two different points.

Best,

Don

On 03/02/2012 04:08 PM, Michael Cysouw wrote:
> On 2 Mar 2012, at 13:26, Peter Kahrel wrote:
>
>> Martin and I seem to be agreed that the best (if not the only) way
>> to solve this is to add a character to a Unicode range. Here's why.
>> Suppose you have some roman text in, say, English, in which a word
>> or a phrase is used from language B, using the open a. In the roman
>> text, all the a's look the same. But when you italicise the text,
>> you want the English a's to look like italic script a's, and the
>> a's in the bits from language B like slanted a's.
>
> Please note that there is no way to refer to italics in the UNICODE
> description of a character. UNICODE does specify capitalization, but
> not italicization!
>
> From the perspective of UNICODE, the "a" and "ɑ" are simply two
> different characters. If you put them in italics, they are still two
> different characters (even if they might look similar). Try searching
> for one or the other, and you will find only one of them. The basic
> rule of UNICODE: it's not about the looks, it's about the encoding.
> Here there is no problem in encoding, there is a problem in the
> looks. That's not UNICODE's business.
>
> The only way to solve this problem in the Unicode standard would be
> to apply for a separate italic symbol, e.g.
>
> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1d434/index.htm
>
> This is also not feasible, because it assumes that the italic version
> really "means" something different. It doesn't in our case.
>
> Really: the only solution is to explain to TYPOGRAPHERS that the
> italic versions of "a" and "ɑ" should look different. They have to
> come up with a nice way to have both of them look good, and still
> look different. Sometimes typographers appear to have been lazy, and
> simply re-use a glyph. That is mostly not a problem, but sometimes it
> is.
>
> But: changing UNICODE is not an option here.
>
> best michael