> [Original Message] > From: Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > I have a proposal for the i.t.a. in the works; I would not unify it > with this character, which has a specific use in American > English lexicography.
But that specific use is the same as the use of the reversed t, h ligature that the i.t.a. uses and the proposed U+0246 (LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ITALIC TH) from N2656. While all three have different glyphs, they all represent a voiced th in English, and it is extremely unlikely that any document would use more than one such form. The distinction between the glyphs would seem to me to be more appropriately encoded by font than by character. Even if one admits that there is sufficient distinction between the i.t.a. voiced th and the other two glyphs to merit a distinct code point for the i.t.a. character, (an admission that further reflection convinces me is not unwarranted) the same cannot be said for LATIN SMALL LETTER TH WITH STRIKETHROUGH and the proposed LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ITALIC TH of N2656. Both are the result of a particular dictionary's attempt to distinguish between unvoiced and voiced th in a manner that is readable as plain text if the font variation (strikethrough or italic ligature) is ignored. Furthermore, in yet another dictionary (Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged, 2nd ed.[World Publishing Company,1962]) A plain th ligature with the connection formed by the extension of the horizontal bar of the t is used to represent the voiced th sound. Making a consistent font distinction within a dictionary to indicate the voiced th is part of American English lexicography, but the distinction used is not consistent between dictionaries. As such I feel that encoding one character for the lexicographic voiced th and using a choice of font to determine the exact glyph would be preferable to encoding separate codepoints for what is in my opinion the same character.
