Iʼm aware that this thread is getting lengthy and (supposedly) tiresome. Therefore, I wouldnʼt have sent this to the List today. I really wanted to make a break and come back later.
However, with respect to the consequences of the result of this issue for millions of end-users, and the imminence of the French keyboard standardization these months, I acknowledge to be given the opportunity to keep discussing on-list. ***Disclaimer*** Iʼm not a part of the French keyboard standard WG, and Iʼm talking on my own behalf, in civic responsiveness. On Sun, 15 Jan 2017 10:15:33 -0800, Asmus Freytag wrote: > [Quoted mail] > > Contrary to your assertion about fonts elsewhere, the poor rendering of > subscripts/superscripts that I reported to you is based on the fact that > the characters are missing, but that the glyphs are not laid out as > running text. To date, as far as I know, the only domain where superscripts and subscripts are mandatory in general text are abbreviations of numerals, titles, entities, measurement units, chemical compounds and so on, using Western Arabic digits and Latin superscript lowercase. Iʼm quite sure that no other scripts do have this typographical convention, that is a part of an old discipline called “orthotypography.” While I was wrong mixing it up with orthography, the outstanding importance of these rules for unambiguous representation of text calls for special treatment in practice and in the Unicode Standard. In these ranges, one character is still missing because the UTC has refused to encode *LATIN SUPERSCRIPT SMALL LETTER Q, aka *MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Q. This has little incidence on general practice. The main challenge outside Unicode is the availability of the related glyphs in current fonts, as well as their consistency. To date, almost all webmails propose only fonts where they are designed in an intentionally inconsistent way, supposedly to make them unusable for accurate display: The 'ⁱ' is always far too high, and the 'ⁿ' is too bold and with random vertical alignment. In my opinion, the legacy status of these two is used as a fake explanation; compare with the inconsistent design of '⁶' and '⁹' in some fonts, along with that of '⁰', while there is no excuse of “legacy,” unlike for '¹', '²' and '³', where “legacy” is equally abused to mess up the typefaces. This applies as well to most other fonts. The only correct font-family Iʼve found so far is Calibri. Consistently, this is the body font in the default template of Microsoft Word. > > When viewing with monospaced fonts, the separation between glyphs > corresponds to the spacing of the full-size characters. When using > formatting (styling) the superscripted text is in a smaller font size, > reducing the spacing between characters, so that strings of them look > like ordinary text again and not s p a c e d o u t. Iʼm facing this issue when writing drafts in my text editor, where however Iʼm able to set the font to any value, including Calibri. Displaying this in Calibri allows to appreciate the consistent and running-text-like display of the superscripts: // This is ᵒʳᵈⁱⁿᵃʳʸ ᵗᵉˣᵗ ˢᵉᵗ ⁱⁿ ᵁⁿⁱᶜᵒᵈᵉ ᴸᵃᵗⁱⁿ ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗ ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ˡᵉᵗᵗᵉʳˢ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʷᵒ ᶜᵃᵖⁱᵗᵃˡ ˡᵉᵗᵗᵉʳˢ // This is the range: ᵃᵇᶜᵈᵉᶠᵍʰⁱʲᵏˡᵐⁿᵒᵖ ^q_unavailableʳˢᵗᵘᵛʷˣʸᶻ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉₀ This is how a complete and Unicode conformant typeface is supposed to work. In practice, this turns out to be implemented far, far more than U+2044. > > I'm not going to spend much more time on this discussion. When I launched this discussion on December 28, 2016, I naively believed that this time, the matter would be quickly settled, and I could go on being more productive on developing the keyboard layouts and documenting them. Now that this thread still hasnʼt come to an even halfway useful result, I need to make one more attempt. The goal is to get Unicode accept the fact that people use superscript letters in French, and super/sub scripts in vulgar fractions, and have them on their keyboards, and that these people are not considered as hackers, but as making a reasonable, thoughtful and responsive use of the Standard. That is not a matter of “value inversion,” but of correcting a particular design principle that was misled and biased under a (hypothetically) strong influence of *extrinsic* factors from the beginning on (see point 3 below). Itʼs good to know about the counter-arguments that may be figured out, so Iʼm grateful to all who were so kind to respond. What bothers me, is that there is still so much persistent opposition; and what makes me fear the worse, is that the arguments raised against the general use of preformatted characters are so biased and fallacious, unlike any normal-time reasoning: 1) Missing font support as an argument against the use of a character has never, never been the way Unicode worked, so far as Iʼve been given the opportunity to understand something of Unicode till now. 2) This missing font support is mostly a consequence of the Unicode strategy on these characters: Discouraging their use and even misnaming them intentionally in an inconsistent manner (from an overall point of view), Unicode drove a significant part of the font designers away from adding them completely and with a consistent design, and from implementing combining marks support for these characters. 3) This strategy is biased from the beginning on, as it goes against the user preferences of Latin script using countries, while AFAIK all countries using other scripts are unconcerned because they actually donʼt *use* superscripting in such an *extensive* way. Please correct me If Iʼm wrong. Consequently, there would be *nobody* asking for more (except the already discussed completion of some ranges of Latin script). This strategy of shooing users (and their developers) away from using preformatted letters and digits seems to aim nothing serious than support of software vendorsʼ marketing strategies, despite of the software not needing poor character support based (and poor keyboard layout based) marketing. > Using code points > "against the grain" that is, in contradiction to the way their use was > intended when they were encoded means that you are going to run into many > issues based on font vendors and implementers expectations on how users > would follow the conventions suggested in the Unicode Standard. Iʼve got the news that Edge neither still doesnʼt make OpenType fonts work for U+2044. One might wonder however whether the users should conform to the Standard litterally while even Microsoft donʼt. Iʼm not here to post feature requests to the attention of Microsoft any longer. My actual suggestions are perhaps a bit more complex than that. I just wish that the Unicode policy wrt superscripts become more user-centered, more user-friendly. The core issue is the use of these letters in current text in some languages that need them to apply a typographic convention that is close to orthography. Superscripting is a far, far stronger requirement than all other formatting conventions, as it can affect the spelling of the grammatical entity. Weʼre facing strong demands on user side relayed by standards bodies from the early times on, when ordinal indicators were first encoded as a part of Latin-1. Today most users still type a degree sign to emulate a superscript o, and the French NB (that Iʼm not a part of, nor am y a member of the keyboard standard WG) wishes an ordinal indicator on the keyboard to represent the most common ordinal indicator in French: "ᵉ". > > Your discussion of the support of the fraction slash (with regular digits) > across fonts is potentially more useful -- bringing attention to this issue > could bring font vendors to perhaps update earlier fonts to support the > correct conventions for 2044 (which incidentally post dated the design of > many popular fonts). This is relatively important, but it is far outweighed by the ordinal indicator issue, and along with it, the need to stabilize superscript abbreviations. > > In other words, there's no need to "fix" the character encoding, but much > need to make sure that what's in the character encoding (and its associated > conventions) is actually supported as intended. Additionally, I now suggest to add an informative alias to each one of the (intentionally) misnamed characters. This “MODIFIER LETTER” disguise of the true *LATIN SUPERSCRIPT LETTERs seems to me a twisted trick to make inadvertant people believe that hereʼs a thing to insiders that is completely useless to other people. The truth happens to show up wherever the editorial committee (as well as anybody else) can afford to feel free to write their own, unbiased language: [Iʼm highlighting with uppercase] @ Latin superscript modifier letters @+ See also SUPERSCRIPT LATIN LETTERS in the Spacing Modifier Letters block starting at 02B0. 1D2C MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL A ... I think that the "MODIFIER LETTER" labeling of these characters is not straightforward enough for a standard who claims that the character names are mere identifiers. This is an example of how the identifiers were (ab)used as descriptors, to carry prescriptions and corporate preferences on how to use or not to use the repertoire. When Iʼm back writing up some keyboard documentation, I really would like to be able to deliver a better image of Unicode – and of Microsoft – than that one. Please help me improve my communication, and make Unicode a user-centered standard. Below are the proposed additions, that Iʼd like to submit to your kind review prior to posting them with the Contact Form. Regards, Marcel NamesList snippets with additional informative aliases providing straightforward character identifiers, and some comment lines: (Original file: http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/NamesList.txt ) @@ 02B0 Spacing Modifier Letters 02FF @+ Superscript and subscript letters were not intended to replace markup, but they are for use where super/sub scripting is important in plain text, or formatting is inappropriate. @ Latin superscript modifier letters @+ "modifier letter small" stands for "latin superscript small letter", and "modifier letter small capital" for "latin letter small capital". x (superscript latin small letter i - 2071) x (superscript latin small letter n - 207F) 02B0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL H = latin superscript small letter h * aspiration # <super> 0068 02B1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL H WITH HOOK = latin superscript small letter h with hook * breathy voiced, murmured x (latin small letter h with hook - 0266) x (combining diaeresis below - 0324) # <super> 0266 02B2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL J = latin superscript small letter j * palatalization x (combining palatalized hook below - 0321) # <super> 006A 02B3 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL R = latin superscript small letter r # <super> 0072 02B4 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED R = latin superscript small letter turned r x (latin small letter turned r - 0279) # <super> 0279 02B5 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED R WITH HOOK = latin superscript small letter turned r with hook x (latin small letter turned r with hook - 027B) # <super> 027B 02B6 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL INVERTED R = latin letter small capital inverted r * preceding four used for r-coloring or r-offglides x (latin letter small capital inverted r - 0281) # <super> 0281 02B7 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL W = latin superscript small letter w * labialization x (combining inverted double arch below - 032B) # <super> 0077 02B8 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Y = latin superscript small letter y * palatalization * common Americanist usage for 02B2 # <super> 0079 […] @ Additions based on 1989 IPA 02DE MODIFIER LETTER RHOTIC HOOK * rhotacization in vowel * often ligated: 025A = 0259 + 02DE; 025D = 025C + 02DE 02DF MODIFIER LETTER CROSS ACCENT * Swedish grave accent 02E0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GAMMA = latin superscript small letter gamma * these modifier letters are occasionally used in transcription of affricates # <super> 0263 02E1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L = latin superscript small letter l # <super> 006C 02E2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL S = latin superscript small letter s # <super> 0073 02E3 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL X = latin superscript small letter x # <super> 0078 02E4 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP = latin superscript letter reversed glottal stop # <super> 0295 […] @ Latin superscript modifier letters @+ See also superscript Latin letters in the Spacing Modifier Letters block starting at 02B0. 1D2C MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL A = latin superscript capital letter a # <super> 0041 1D2D MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL AE = latin superscript capital letter ae # <super> 00C6 1D2E MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL B = latin superscript capital letter b # <super> 0042 1D2F MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL BARRED B = latin superscript capital letter barred b 1D30 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL D = latin superscript capital letter d # <super> 0044 1D31 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL E = latin superscript capital letter e # <super> 0045 1D32 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL REVERSED E = latin superscript capital letter reversed e # <super> 018E 1D33 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL G = latin superscript capital letter g # <super> 0047 1D34 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL H = latin superscript capital letter h # <super> 0048 1D35 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL I = latin superscript capital letter i # <super> 0049 1D36 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL J = latin superscript capital letter j # <super> 004A 1D37 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL K = latin superscript capital letter k # <super> 004B 1D38 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL L = latin superscript capital letter l # <super> 004C 1D39 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL M = latin superscript capital letter m # <super> 004D 1D3A MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL N = latin superscript capital letter n # <super> 004E 1D3B MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL REVERSED N = latin superscript capital letter reversed n 1D3C MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL O = latin superscript capital letter o # <super> 004F 1D3D MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL OU = latin superscript capital letter ou # <super> 0222 1D3E MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL P = latin superscript capital letter p # <super> 0050 1D3F MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL R = latin superscript capital letter r # <super> 0052 1D40 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T = latin superscript capital letter t # <super> 0054 1D41 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL U = latin superscript capital letter u # <super> 0055 1D42 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL W = latin superscript capital letter w # <super> 0057 1D43 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL A = latin superscript small letter a # <super> 0061 1D44 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED A = latin superscript small letter turned a # <super> 0250 1D45 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ALPHA = latin superscript small letter alpha # <super> 0251 1D46 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED AE = latin superscript small letter turned ae # <super> 1D02 1D47 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL B = latin superscript small letter b # <super> 0062 1D48 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL D = latin superscript small letter d # <super> 0064 1D49 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL E = latin superscript small letter e # <super> 0065 1D4A MODIFIER LETTER SMALL SCHWA = latin superscript small letter schwa # <super> 0259 1D4B MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN E = latin superscript small letter open e # <super> 025B 1D4C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED OPEN E = latin superscript small letter turned open e * more appropriate equivalence would be to 1D08 # <super> 025C 1D4D MODIFIER LETTER SMALL G = latin superscript small letter g # <super> 0067 1D4E MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED I = latin superscript small letter i 1D4F MODIFIER LETTER SMALL K = latin superscript small letter k # <super> 006B 1D50 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL M = latin superscript small letter m # <super> 006D 1D51 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ENG = latin superscript small letter eng # <super> 014B 1D52 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL O = latin superscript small letter o # <super> 006F 1D53 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN O = latin superscript small letter open o # <super> 0254 1D54 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TOP HALF O = latin superscript small letter top half o # <super> 1D16 1D55 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL BOTTOM HALF O = latin superscript small letter bottom half o # <super> 1D17 1D56 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL P = latin superscript small letter p # <super> 0070 1D57 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T = latin superscript small letter t # <super> 0074 1D58 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL U = latin superscript small letter u # <super> 0075 1D59 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL SIDEWAYS U = latin superscript small letter sideways u # <super> 1D1D 1D5A MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED M = latin superscript small letter turned m # <super> 026F 1D5B MODIFIER LETTER SMALL V = latin superscript small letter v # <super> 0076 1D5C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL AIN // (a misnomer also as it should be MODIFIER LETTER AIN; cf. 1D25 LATIN LETTER AIN, A724 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN, A725 LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN) = latin superscript letter ain # <super> 1D25 @ Greek superscript modifier letters 1D5D MODIFIER LETTER SMALL BETA = greek superscript small letter beta # <super> 03B2 1D5E MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GREEK GAMMA = greek superscript small letter gamma # <super> 03B3 1D5F MODIFIER LETTER SMALL DELTA // (a misnomer also as it should be MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GREEK DELTA, cf. 1E9F LATIN SMALL LETTER DELTA) = greek superscript small letter delta # <super> 03B4 1D60 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GREEK PHI = greek superscript small letter phi # <super> 03C6 1D61 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CHI = greek superscript small letter chi # <super> 03C7 @ Latin subscript modifier letters 1D62 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER I # <sub> 0069 1D63 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER R # <sub> 0072 1D64 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER U # <sub> 0075 1D65 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER V # <sub> 0076 @ Greek subscript modifier letters 1D66 GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER BETA # <sub> 03B2 1D67 GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER GAMMA # <sub> 03B3 1D68 GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER RHO # <sub> 03C1 1D69 GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER PHI # <sub> 03C6 1D6A GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER CHI # <sub> 03C7 […] @ Modifier letters @+ Other modifier letters can be found in the Spacing Modifier Letters, Phonetic Extensions, as well as Superscripts and Subscripts blocks. 1D9B MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED ALPHA = latin superscript small letter turned alpha # <super> 0252 1D9C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL C = latin superscript small letter c # <super> 0063 1D9D MODIFIER LETTER SMALL C WITH CURL = latin superscript small letter c with curl # <super> 0255 1D9E MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ETH = latin superscript small letter eth # <super> 00F0 1D9F MODIFIER LETTER SMALL REVERSED OPEN E = latin superscript small letter reversed open e # <super> 025C 1DA0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL F = latin superscript small letter f # <super> 0066 1DA1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL DOTLESS J WITH STROKE = latin superscript small letter dotless j with stroke # <super> 025F 1DA2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL SCRIPT G = latin superscript small letter script g # <super> 0261 1DA3 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED H = latin superscript small letter turned h # <super> 0265 1DA4 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL I WITH STROKE = latin superscript small letter i with stroke # <super> 0268 1DA5 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL IOTA = latin superscript small letter iota # <super> 0269 1DA6 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I = latin letter small capital i * not for use in UPA x (modifier letter capital i - 1D35) # <super> 026A 1DA7 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I WITH STROKE = latin letter small capital i with stroke # <super> 1D7B 1DA8 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL J WITH CROSSED-TAIL = latin superscript small letter j with crossed-tail # <super> 029D 1DA9 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH RETROFLEX HOOK = latin superscript small letter l with retroflex hook # <super> 026D 1DAA MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH PALATAL HOOK = latin superscript small letter l with palatal hook # <super> 1D85 1DAB MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L = latin letter small capital l * not for use in UPA x (modifier letter capital l - 1D38) # <super> 029F 1DAC MODIFIER LETTER SMALL M WITH HOOK = latin superscript small letter m with hook # <super> 0271 1DAD MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED M WITH LONG LEG = latin superscript small letter turned m with long leg # <super> 0270 1DAE MODIFIER LETTER SMALL N WITH LEFT HOOK = latin superscript small letter n with left hook # <super> 0272 1DAF MODIFIER LETTER SMALL N WITH RETROFLEX HOOK = latin superscript small letter n with retroflex hook # <super> 0273 1DB0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL N = latin letter small capital n * not for use in UPA x (modifier letter capital n - 1D3A) # <super> 0274 1DB1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL BARRED O = latin superscript small letter barred o # <super> 0275 1DB2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL PHI = latin superscript small letter phi # <super> 0278 1DB3 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL S WITH HOOK = latin superscript small letter s with hook # <super> 0282 1DB4 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ESH = latin superscript small letter esh # <super> 0283 1DB5 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T WITH PALATAL HOOK = latin superscript small letter small t with palatal hook # <super> 01AB 1DB6 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL U BAR = latin superscript small letter u bar # <super> 0289 1DB7 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL UPSILON = latin superscript small letter upsilon # <super> 028A 1DB8 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL U = latin letter small capital u * not for use in UPA x (modifier letter capital u - 1D41) # <super> 1D1C 1DB9 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL V WITH HOOK = latin superscript small letter v with hook # <super> 028B 1DBA MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED V = latin superscript small letter turned v # <super> 028C 1DBB MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Z = latin superscript small letter z # <super> 007A 1DBC MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Z WITH RETROFLEX HOOK = latin superscript small letter z with retroflex hook # <super> 0290 1DBD MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Z WITH CURL = latin superscript small letter z with curl # <super> 0291 1DBE MODIFIER LETTER SMALL EZH = latin superscript small letter ezh # <super> 0292 1DBF MODIFIER LETTER SMALL THETA = latin superscript small letter theta # <super> 03B8 […] @ Additions for Extended IPA A7F8 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL H WITH STROKE = latin superscript capital letter h with stroke * faucalized # <super> 0126 A7F9 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL LIGATURE OE = latin superscript small ligature oe * labialized: open-rounded # <super> 0153 […] @ Modifier letters for German dialectology AB5B MODIFIER BREVE WITH INVERTED BREVE x (breve - 02D8) x (close up - 2050) x (metrical breve - 23D1) AB5C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL HENG = latin superscript small letter heng # <super> A727 AB5D MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH INVERTED LAZY S = latin superscript small letter l with inverted lazy s # <super> AB37 AB5E MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE = latin superscript small letter l with middle tilde # <super> 026B AB5F MODIFIER LETTER SMALL U WITH LEFT HOOK = latin superscript small letter u with left hook # <super> AB52
