Issue 1, issues 2 & 3

[Michael Everson]

Ar 14:46 +0300 2000-05-30, scríobh Jaakko Leino:
>Klaas Ruppel wrote:
>>
>> Principal decisions to be made in regard to Greek letters:
>> A. If there is a (IPA) Latin version of the Greek letter in question
>> which one we choose?
>
>Other things being equal (as if they ever were), I'd choose the latin
>version--if for no other reason, just because the fonts are probably
>drawn so that "latin" letters go more nicely together that "latin" and
>"greek" letters mixed freely. Besides, I agree with Erkki that we should
>use IPA characters whenever there's no reason not to do so.

But that isn't what you get with GAMMA, for instance. Latin gamma is
usually drawn like a v with a ring under it; Greek gamma looks like a
scythe. Is the Latin glyph acceptable?

>As for the ENG versus ETA question, I still feel (as I did about a year
>and a half ago when there was a discussion on the issue on this list)
>that the ideal solution would be to have them both in "free variation",
>because that would reflect the actual situation in FUPA.

Then you have chaos for sorting and searching. We want you to avoid this!

>However, if a choice has to be made, I wouldn't choose ENG. In my (yes,
>somewhat pedantic) opinion, ETA is the original shape of that FUPA
>symbol, and it should stay that way. I feel that this is a reason not to
>follow IPA (or Sami ortography, for that matter), although the question
>is not the most critical one.

The ETA was chosen because printers had Greek sorts in their boxes of lead
type. You'll have fewer problems if you let Greek Eta be a vowel and use
the Latin consonant which looks like the eta, but sounds and functions like
what you really want, namely the velar nasal.

Michael Everson  **  Everson Gunn Teoranta  **   http://www.egt.ie
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