On Thursday, 5 August 2010, Kenneth Whistler <k...@sybase.com> wrote:
> > I am thinking of where a poet might specify an ending version of a glyph at
> > the end of the last word on some lines, yet not on others, for poetic
> > effect. I think that it would be good if one could specify that in plain
> > text.
> Why can't a poet find a poetic means of doing that, instead of depending on a
> standards organization to provide a standard means of doing so in plain text?
> Seems kind of anti-poetic to me. ;-)
> --Ken
Well, I was just suggesting an example. I am not an expert on poetry.
It would not be a matter of a poet depending on a standards organization, it
would be a matter of a standards organization noting that adding alternate
glyphs to fonts is a modern trend and doing what it can to facilitate access to
those alternate glyphs from plain text in a standardized way.
For example, suppose that an alternate ending glyph for a letter e is desired
at the end of a line of a poem. I am thinking that U+0065 U+FE0F could be used
to do that.
It seems to me that as U+0065 U+FE0F is presently unused and that there are
also other variation selectors not used with U+0065, that it would do no harm
and would be useful for U+0065 U+FE0F to be officially standardized as
requesting an alternate ending glyph for a letter e, yet using the ordinary
glyph of U+0065 of the font if an alternate ending glyph of the letter e is not
available within the font.
The standards organizations have a great opportunity to advance typography by
defining some of the Latin letter plus variation selector pairs so that
alternate glyphs within a font may be accessed directly from plain text.
William Overington
6 August 2010
