Re: [Bug 791076] Re: Emacs: choosing normal monospace font in Emacs but gives bolded italic

2011-06-06 Thread David Marshall
I did my own investigation of the font files using version 0.4 of the monospace. The Regular, Italic, and Bold are all 100% to-spec monospace fonts. There is a small metrics bug in the Bold Italic which means it's not quite a to-spec monospace font. The odd thing is the applications which are

Re: [Bug 769874] Re: Naming restrictions in UFL considered non-free by Debian

2011-04-28 Thread David Marshall
We regard .ttf as a binary distribution format. Editing it to make modifications to a font (apart from the very lowest-level bit-flipping in data tables) is pretty perverse and often unpleasant; you certainly wouldn't want to edit the glyph outlines in a .ttf. The lack of free tools capable of

Re: [Bug 744812] Re: FontConfig/Qt stack choke on Ubuntu Medium font meta-data

2011-04-07 Thread David Marshall
The other option is to convert the legacy naming of the Medium so that it's a stand-alone family (like the Light) rather than being the Light-Bold. Dave -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-29 Thread David Marshall
Too many of these solutions stick out like a sore thumb - neither retaining the rhythm of the capital strokes, not cohesively using the features of the font. And then at the other end of the spectrum, versions far too similar to a B to be clear. I do hope we're not hitting an impasse. Dave

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-25 Thread David Marshall
Yes, I'm in complete agreement here - it needs to be clearly not an SS, while still immediately indicating exactly that underlying semantic to everyone who sees it. We also have the constraint that we need to slot this into a monospace font. Contradictory requirements, yes, but we can be as

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-22 Thread David Marshall
There's really nothing more that I can add to this - I think you're seeing things which simply aren't there. The various suggestions, of which you feature only three, clearly indicate that they did not feel constrained by the Fraktur form, and were actively seeking their own, Roman, solution

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-21 Thread David Marshall
I'm afraid this explanation jumps through hoops as unjustifiable as those Tschichold used. Again conflating z and ezh, shifting characters about for no apparent reason, and papering over a complete lack of similarity in characters. Passing off a distorted 3 as an acceptable Romanized ezh is

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-20 Thread David Marshall
Some people seem to be reading too much into my description of ß as a ligature. A ligature is the joining of any two or more characters - whether the joined setting can be sensibly decomposed into its constituent parts or not. The ampersand, of example, is a ligature, but no-one would suggest

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-20 Thread David Marshall
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. The 1903 Sulzbacher Form, effectively a thorough romanization of ß, *is* intended to be derived from a long-s+short-s ligature. It's Fraktur forms which were almost invariably long-s+z or long-s+ezh forms. It's on *this* point that Tschichold was flatly

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-20 Thread David Marshall
A very clear description, but it simply doesn't match the form they are promoting. It conflates a z with an ezh - two completely different shapes, and makes reference to features which simply aren't present. I'd go as far as to say it's a explanation as fallacious as Tschichold's. A long-s-ezh

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-20 Thread David Marshall
I'm afraid you're not correct - the modern ß *is* a straightforward, compact, and clear ligature of long-s, short-s. The fact that at some stages through history words were spelt otherwise (s-s, s-z, s-ezh) doesn't detract from the origin of the *current* shape of the character. Dave --

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-19 Thread David Marshall
I think we're agreed that we should have *something* in that slot, but not agreed that it necessarily be a strange and distorted big version of ß. There is no harm in searching for a solution that's clear, understood, sympathetic, and elegant. I'm not a German speaker and even I find the

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-19 Thread David Marshall
To be clear, I absolutely respect typographic diversity, and certainly don't regard ß as a foreign particle. However, I also have respect for the necessity, diversity, and history of ß, which is why I don't find the Dresdner Form of the capital visually acceptable. ß is a simple and elegant

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-08 Thread David Marshall
Unicode's guidance on U+1E9E reads capital sharp s is intended for typographical representations of signage and uppercase titles, and other environments where users require the sharp s to be preserved in uppercase. Overall, such usage is rare. In contrast, standard German orthography uses the

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-08 Thread David Marshall
You're right - we have no idea what diktats we're going to comply with over the next decade, or how they will impact on the fonts and various scripts. So, while we should constantly strive to keep the metrics stable, I have no doubt that we will be forced to make changes to them - either to

Re: [Bug 650498] Re: Expansion:'ẞ' LATIN CAPTIAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E)

2010-11-08 Thread David Marshall
I'm not a designer, so I too am interested to see if it can be done in an aesthetically pleasing way. :) My view is that a good solution needs to not only fit the design of the font, but also be immediately obvious to German readers as to what it is, why it exists, and why we've done it. The

Re: [Bug 655357] Re: New Rupee symbol not shown

2010-10-05 Thread David Marshall
This isn't an issue with the Ubuntu font, it's an issue with the version of Unicode being supported by the character map. U+20B9 is new in Unicode 6.0, which is still in draft. It was requested that the font be new-Rupee-ready, which it is, though apps will still need to catch up to know what