Earlier this morning I tried writing a poem intended to use alternate ending
glyphs.
I hope that readers will enjoy reading it. For reasons of correctness at the
present time, I have used U+EE0F, which is from the Private Use Area, rather
than U+FE0F, which is what would be used if my suggestion for accessing an
alternate ending glyph ever becomes a formal proposal that later becomes
accepted into regular Unicode.
A poem can express a picture
Such as a fjord's towering cliff
And a poem can have fine typography
Such as a flourishing, ending glyph
A poem can imagine great buildings
Constructed of stones rising high
With surrounding landscape suggested
With glyphs from a printer's pie
A poem can express ideas
Whatever ideas one may want
A poem can end with a flourish
An alternate glyph from a font
Some readers might like to know that I composed the poem directly using the
computer rather than write it on paper. I used WordPad and keyed EE0F followed
by Alt-x in order to enter the U+EE0F character. I checked the result using SC
UniPad.
I had started with the intention of a single verse poem, the present first
verse. I then added a second verse, which is the present third verse. I then
realized that I had not used an alternate ending e, so I wrote a third verse. I
then decided that the newly written verse should become the second verse.
When entering pie I found that I needed to type pie then a space then EE0F
then Alt-x and then delete the space.
I am aware that I have used a basic apostrophe. I thought of using a 9-style
apostrophe yet was concerned that it might not get through the system. If
anyone does try typesetting the poem, please use the 9-style apostrophe:
indeed, a desktop publishing package might well change it automatically.
A helpful experiment would be for an advanced format font to be made that
recognises the sequences and glyph substitutes the alternate ending glyphs when
the plain text is pasted into an appropriate application program.
Readers who would like to try writing their own poems, or indeed prose, using
an U+EE0F to indicate an alternate ending glyph are welcome to do so.
William Overington
12 August 2010
