Ant�nio asked:
> I've just downloaded the PDF files with 4.0 additions (U40-*.pdf). One > question: How is one supposed to tell apart the glyphs for U+1D29 and > U+1D18?... Or one isn't?... (OK, this question is probably more suited > to be posed to IPA, but.)
Visually, you usually couldn't, any more than you can tell apart U+0050 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P and U+03A1 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO in a typical, stylistically harmonized font.
Don't ask me to vouch for and explain the vagaries of Uralic notational practice, which I find alien. ;-) My expectation would be that practitioners would not use both U+1D18 (a small-cap P, for a "semi-voiced" [p] sound -- not really a well-defined IPA concept) and U+1D29 (a small-cap RHO, for voiceless uvular trill, = IPA <U+0280, U+0325>) in the same transcription, however, as even they would get confused.
The proposal ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2419 said this:
4. LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL P and GREEK LETTER SMALL CAPITAL RHO (X-1D18, X-0373).
These letters look alike but are distinct; one is a semi-voiced [p] sound contrasting with UPA p, and
the other is a voiceless uvular trill [R ] contrasting with UPA � U+03C1 the voiced uvular trill [R].
This begs the question of how the *reader* of this notation will be able to decide which is which. This is UNLIKE the case of the latin and Greek alphabets, where in the context of Latin text you use P for P and in the Greek text you use P for RHO and keyboards will keep you honest on text entyr and the distinction in character code is needed for case mapping rather than display, since p and rho look rather different.
In the case of UPA there would need to be the need for a similar context to help decide which is which, but even then, if there is no visual or context distinction (other than the intended meaning), it's hard to keep texts accurately coded.
A./
