At 10:05 -0800 2001-12-02, John Hudson wrote: >At 14:14 12/1/2001, Michael Everson wrote: > >>It is certainly not a glyph variant of an ampersand. An ampersand >>is a ligature of e and t. This is certainly an abbreviation of och. >>That both mean "and" is NOT a reason for unifying different signs. > >The fact that & is accepted by Swedish readers as a substitute for >the 'och' sign, and that the latter seems to be limited to >manuscript, suggests a glyph variant. I do not consider the fact >that both mean 'and' to be a reason for unifying different signs. I >ponder whether two different signs that are apparently used >*interchangeably* might be unified?
Um, I accept "etc." and "&c." and "7c." (the last with a Tironian et, admittedly peculiar to most readers of English) as "meaning" the same thing but that doesn't mean that & and 7 are the same character. They have different origins which are well known. You don't unify that kind of thing. In Irish many people accept "srl" and "&rl" and "7rl" as meaning the same thing as well. The form with the actual & is considered peculiar. "o." and "o-with-underscore" are NOT glyph variants of a ligature of e and t (at a character level), no matter what they mean. -- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
