> From Unicode's perspective, the consistent difference in treatment of 00B7 > and 0387 is embarrassing, given the fact of their canonical equivalence.
There are to be sure, features of Unicode that are "embarassing", but I don't think this is one of them. Take another case: even if consistent practice in Poland is to have the grave accent in à at a different angle than what is practice in France, that does not make it a mistake for us to have encoded both as Ã. These sorts of preferences can be taken into account in the tailoring of fonts to particular practices, and this issue doesn't not require that we let a thousand middle dots bloom. And canonical equivalence was the mechanism for saying that two variants of character really should never have been encoded (but we had to for compatibility reasons). Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com â ààààààààààààààààààààà â ----- Original Message ----- From: "Asmus Freytag" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sat, 2004 Apr 17 15:32 Subject: Re: U+0140 > At 01:54 PM 4/17/2004, Michael Everson wrote: > >The samples Asmus sent suggest to me that a school of typographers made a > >set of bad decisions, even if they were really famous and got paid lots of > >money and their fonts are widely shipped! > > In all charity, Michael, your opinion seems to be mainly your personal > point of view. I'd love to see any evidence of either mid-dot or ano teleia > being consistently shown the way you claim it should be, but can't find it. > > I've attached a second set of samples. > > As you can see there are a few fonts, most designed for user interfaces, > that give 00B7 and 0387 the same treatment. I've put them on the top. The > rest, and it's a diverse lot, does not. > > Also, as to your view of the relation between mid-dot and colon, it's clear > that this is not readily shared among typographers. > > From Unicode's perspective, the consistent difference in treatment of 00B7 > and 0387 is embarrassing, given the fact of their canonical equivalence. > > A./ > > PS: John had written: > > >>This would make the mid-dot too high. The top dot of the colon usually > >>sits toward the top of the x-height; the *mid*-dot should sit lower, > >>optically midway up the x-height (which means slightly higher than the > >>actual halfway mark). The top dot of a colon is typically closer to the > >>height of the Greek ano teleia, which aligns with the x-height (and which > >>should align with the cap height in all-cap settings, and with the > >>small-cap height in smallcap settings). > > which pretty much is the way most of the samples have it, but there are > some interesting differences, esp. among the more decorative fonts.
