FYI, we have gathered in CLDR on usage of characters in different languages, including quotation marks (and those to use for embeddings). It is at http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/beta-charts/by_type/misc.characters.html . (The page takes a while to load because of the exemplar information at the bottom.)
If any of that data appears to be incorrect or missing, people can request a change -- we are in midst of our data submission cycle right now: http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool ------------------------------ Mark <https://plus.google.com/114199149796022210033> * * *— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —* ** On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 23:43, Asmus Freytag <[email protected]> wrote: > Even if some minutiae of glyph selection are left to a font, the problem > is often that there's no specification as to what certain languages need, > so that fonts cannot be expected to provide the correct implementation. > > When Unicode was first created, the fact that one and the same quotation > mark character could be both opening and closing was not widely realized in > the character encoding community. This was rectified over time, and now > there is detailed information (even though it may not be exhaustive) on > common practices in chapter 6 of the standard. > > So far, this information is limited to character usage (which character > code when). Augmenting that with information on required design > differences, that is elements of glyph variations that are encompassed by > certain of the characters, and how they track with language, would round > out the picture. > > I take this kind of information as an essential adjunct to the identity of > a character, as in effect, it documents which typical glyph variants have > been explicitly unified. For many characters, in particular the letters, > glyph variations rarely need to be documented, because each variant relates > to the underlying character in an "obvious" manner. The same is usually not > the case for punctuation. > > So, one of the most useful things that could come of the current > discussion, would be a thorough documentation of the glyph variations > needed to support both English and German for the same quotation mark > characters. > > The document that was passed around here, is difficult to follow because > it mixes issues of glyph design with character selection and font > selection. The discussion would have to be recast in terms of what design > features successful language-dependent glyphs would need to exhibit for a > combination of existing characters with certain languages. > > A./ > >
