What you're looking for is a class of Unicode characters called
combining marks. In this specific case, you're looking for combining
half marks, which when put together span multiple characters, such as
the ligatures used to transcribe Cyrillic characters in Latin characters.
Not all fonts contain the Unicode block that supports combining marks.
Arial is a common font that happens to have that support, so you'll
often find it used in library catalogs.
In my library's discovery system, it seems that whenever characters need
the combining marks, they are forced to use the Arial font by placing
then within an HTML <span> element styled with Arial as the font, like this.
<span class="combined-half-mark">i︠a︡</span>
You'll find some records at <
https://onesearch.library.nd.edu/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,vospominanii%EF%B8%A0a%EF%B8%A1&tab=nd_campus&search_scope=nd_campus&vid=NDU&lang=en_US&offset=0
>.
I don't know how they get enclosed in the span element. It well could be
through the use of Javascript, as you suggested in a previous e-mail.
Wikipedia has some information on combining half marks at <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_Half_Marks >. If you want to try
using Javascript to detect these marks, I found this article that might
be of interest, <
https://dmitripavlutin.com/what-every-javascript-developer-should-know-about-unicode/
>.
Andy
On 1/26/2020 1:04 PM, Eric Phetteplace wrote:
Ineed after asking on Twitter, I discovered the arch is not an accent, but
a ligature meant to indicate that two latinate characters are representing
one Cyrllic one. It's apparently an idiosyncrasy of library cataloging:
"Yup, left ligature and right ligature. It's because library
transliteration values absolute precision over readability. Just writing ia
could be, in theory, either иа or я, so the ligatures signify that it's all
one letter under there."
https://twitter.com/marccold/status/1220858664560529408
Honestly though, it doesn't matter what language or meaning the symbol has,
it doesn't render correctly in our catalog so I'm still stuck. I wonder if
anyone else has a solution that doesn't involve simply using Arial. I see a
lot of catalog records with this ligature and yet not every catalog is
forced to use one of the small selection of fonts that support it, I hope.
Best,
ERIC PHETTEPLACE Systems Librarian (he/him)
[email protected] | o 510.594.3660
5212 Broadway | Oakland, CA | 94618
:(){ :|: & };:
On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 4:15 AM le-grex <[email protected]> wrote:
Am 26.01.20 um 12:54 schrieb le-grex:
*snip*
So his latin Name is M. Saryan. Or in russian, М. Сарьян. I would not
expect to see this pronounciation signs in a book search, since they are
not part of his name. But i'm not a Librarian in the way that i know
what the demands of these things are.
Excuse me, i meant "М. Сарьян" without the pronounciation sign ;)
*snip*
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--
Andy Boze, Associate Librarian
University of Notre Dame
208A Hesburgh Library
(574) 631-8708
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