On 21/08/2003 03:14, Michael Everson wrote:
At 10:59 +0100 2003-08-21, Paul James Cowie wrote:
the sign used for aleph (looks like a 3, but isn't, obviously)
Not encoded yet.
What are you using for ayin?
EGYPTOLOGICAL AYIN? I don't think it is either U+02BD or U+02BF. The former is a reversed comma, the latter a half-ring. And neither has a capital, as the Egyptological character has.
If you are using U+02BF, you might consider using U+02BE as an interim for aleph, and considering the glyph like a 3 as a typographic variant.
A double half-ring as a glyph variant for a single half-ring? No thanks. And EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF is casing.
U+02BE is commonly used for transliteration of Hebrew alef as well as the phoentically similar Arabic hamza. Or maybe you are using U+02BB or U+02BD (and yes, I know I am doing this in my Hebrew issues document, but only because the other glyphs were not in the font), not sure if you should be, in that case aleph would fit better with U+02BC though I guess you wouldn't want to change the glyph in your font as you don't want all your apostrophes looking like 3's.
The Egyptological characters are quite different from the other modifier letters used for Arabic and Hebrew. Alef in general Semitics looks like a right single quotation mark or a right-half ring. Egyptological Alef looks like two right-half rings one over the other, and usually these are connected. This is clearly a novel letter. And while Semitic Ayin is often represented with either U+02BB or U+02BF, neither of those are casing. To my mind, the Egyptological letters exist in one-to-one relation with Gardiner G1 'Egyptian vulture' (ALEF), M17 'flowering reed' (YOD) and 36 'forearm' (AYIN) apart from the casing which has been added in modern editorial practice.
Or would U+021D or U+025C be suitable for your 3?
U+021D is yogh, which is what it is. It is not an Alef, and the resemblance is only superficial. And U+025C is a reverse epsilon, not an Alef.
the sign used for yod (looks like a i with a right ring tick above it)
This one looks rather like U+1EC9 though I am not sure if the hook above is quite the right shape for you. You might prefer a regular i followed by U+0357 COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE. Or maybe U+0313 would be preferred, this is the Greek smooth breathing and looks like a comma.
None of the above. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
