Dense encoding, part II

Dense encoding, part II

[Mojca Miklavec]

Hello,

The fact that all Polish fonts (lm, iwona, kurier, antt) now ship with
el-* files makes me wonder: is there time to do the next step and
finish the second encoding with symbols?

Mojca

Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Hans Hagen]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:

>Hello,
>
>The fact that all Polish fonts (lm, iwona, kurier, antt) now ship with
>el-* files makes me wonder: is there time to do the next step and
>finish the second encoding with symbols?
>  
>
indeed

Hans 

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Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Adam Lindsay]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> The fact that all Polish fonts (lm, iwona, kurier, antt) now ship with
>> el-* files makes me wonder: is there time to do the next step and
>> finish the second encoding with symbols?
>>  
>>
> indeed

Oop. Sorry, I hadn't been watching that.
I've suggested texnansi as a starting point, at least within ConTeXt. 
What symbols do people want that *aren't* within texnansi?

(Hint:
  Here are some symbols present in some Unicode-y fonts, but there's 
really little pattern to the coverage within "typical" professional fonts:
  http://homepage.mac.com/atl/tex/UnicodeSymbolDemo.pdf )
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
  Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
  Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
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Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 2/5/06, Adam Lindsay wrote:
> Hans Hagen wrote:
> > Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> >
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> The fact that all Polish fonts (lm, iwona, kurier, antt) now ship with
> >> el-* files makes me wonder: is there time to do the next step and
> >> finish the second encoding with symbols?
> >>
> >>
> > indeed
>
> Oop. Sorry, I hadn't been watching that.
> I've suggested texnansi as a starting point, at least within ConTeXt.
> What symbols do people want that *aren't* within texnansi?

1. Would Caron & similar uppercase accents make sense? I doubt that
many accents are needed in addition to what is already present in the
other encoding anyway, but something like that could be used if there
is no Ccaron present in the font for example:

\definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textCaron C}
instead of
\definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textcaron C}

In well-designed fonts (including all Polish fonts such as lm,
antykwa, iwona, ...) the lowercase and the uppercase variant of the
accent differ. (Try to write \Scaron\Ccaron in texnansi encoding for
example to see the difference).

Of course some care has to be taken, so that it will also work for
fonts without those additional accents for uppercase characters (using
\iffontchar perhaps?).

2. perhaps some currency symbols missing in texnansi
I would suggest to add Euro, but with some special care of course.
Perhaps some users still prefer to use the regular (geometrical)
symbol rather than the one taken from I-forgot-which-font (the default
behaviour when \texteuro is used).

Any other currency on this list worth supporting?
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20A0.pdf
Perhaps dong, lira, Won ...

3. Perhaps a short glimpse into:
http://source.contextgarden.net/ts1-lm.enc
http://www.cstug.cz/aktivity/2005/lm-at11e.pdf
http://www.janusz.nowacki.strefa.pl/pliki/AntykwaTorunska-doc-en-2_03.pdf
if you notice anything worth supporting.

"married" might be useful for geneaology, I guess that the leaf is
there for the same purpose. No idea why anyone would want to use the
musical note (ugly in lm and probably hardly present in any other
font).

4. numero sign, ordfeminine, ordmasculine, copyleft ;), I don't know
if anybody needs fractions, permyriad, ... one/two/...superior
(present in some regimes) are pretty pointless in TeX where you can
use \high{} I guess. Perhaps there should be two different glyphs for
"tilde" and "asciitilde" (not sure about the last one.)

Mojca

Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Adam Lindsay]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On 2/5/06, Adam Lindsay wrote:
>> Hans Hagen wrote:
>>> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> The fact that all Polish fonts (lm, iwona, kurier, antt) now ship with
>>>> el-* files makes me wonder: is there time to do the next step and
>>>> finish the second encoding with symbols?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> indeed
>> Oop. Sorry, I hadn't been watching that.
>> I've suggested texnansi as a starting point, at least within ConTeXt.
>> What symbols do people want that *aren't* within texnansi?
> 
> 1. Would Caron & similar uppercase accents make sense? I doubt that
> many accents are needed in addition to what is already present in the
> other encoding anyway, but something like that could be used if there
> is no Ccaron present in the font for example:
> 
> \definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textCaron C}
> instead of
> \definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textcaron C}
> 
> In well-designed fonts (including all Polish fonts such as lm,
> antykwa, iwona, ...) the lowercase and the uppercase variant of the
> accent differ. (Try to write \Scaron\Ccaron in texnansi encoding for
> example to see the difference).

Good point... except that there are *no* accents available in eurolett, 
anyway. It *should* have all of the accented uppercase characters you 
need (within roman ;). The whole theory is to do away with building text 
accents. But what does Hans want? Should lc and uc accents be available 
to create `weird' combinations?

> Of course some care has to be taken, so that it will also work for
> fonts without those additional accents for uppercase characters (using
> \iffontchar perhaps?).

Indeed. I do want to avoid a strong dependency on the specific glyphs 
that appear in the font. That moves the encoding mess to *within* 
ConTeXt, which is not pretty, either.

> 2. perhaps some currency symbols missing in texnansi
> I would suggest to add Euro, but with some special care of course.
> Perhaps some users still prefer to use the regular (geometrical)
> symbol rather than the one taken from I-forgot-which-font (the default
> behaviour when \texteuro is used).
> 
> Any other currency on this list worth supporting?
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20A0.pdf
> Perhaps dong, lira, Won ...

sounds like ts1-like stuff.

> 3. Perhaps a short glimpse into:
> http://source.contextgarden.net/ts1-lm.enc
> http://www.cstug.cz/aktivity/2005/lm-at11e.pdf
> http://www.janusz.nowacki.strefa.pl/pliki/AntykwaTorunska-doc-en-2_03.pdf
> if you notice anything worth supporting.
> 
> "married" might be useful for geneaology, I guess that the leaf is
> there for the same purpose. No idea why anyone would want to use the
> musical note (ugly in lm and probably hardly present in any other
> font).

They're there because of ts1, which is *mostly* unhelpful here. I would 
have thought glyph coverage from places like Adobe, Storm, and Emigre 
(for example) might be a better guide.

> 4. numero sign, ordfeminine, ordmasculine, copyleft ;), I don't know

well, some of those are in standard practice, at least. ;)

> if anybody needs fractions, permyriad, ... one/two/...superior
> (present in some regimes) are pretty pointless in TeX where you can
> use \high{} I guess. Perhaps there should be two different glyphs for
> "tilde" and "asciitilde" (not sure about the last one.)

Yeah, I'm trying to be driven by *requirements* instead of "technical 
capability" (i.e., what already exists in a family of fairly peculiar 
fonts). I know those are around, but I don't hear a lot of calls for 
them since ConTeXt moved to EC as a default encoding.

adam
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
  Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
  Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 2/10/06, Adam Lindsay wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > 1. Would Caron & similar uppercase accents make sense? I doubt that
> > many accents are needed in addition to what is already present in the
> > other encoding anyway, but something like that could be used if there
> > is no Ccaron present in the font for example:
> >
> > \definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textCaron C}
> > instead of
> > \definecharacter Ccaron {\buildtextaccent\textcaron C}
> >
> > In well-designed fonts (including all Polish fonts such as lm,
> > antykwa, iwona, ...) the lowercase and the uppercase variant of the
> > accent differ. (Try to write \Scaron\Ccaron in texnansi encoding for
> > example to see the difference).
>
> Good point... except that there are *no* accents available in eurolett,
> anyway. It *should* have all of the accented uppercase characters you
> need (within roman ;). The whole theory is to do away with building text
> accents. But what does Hans want? Should lc and uc accents be available
> to create `weird' combinations?

I know that there are no accents available in "el", but I thought this
was in order to make more space for other glyphs that require kerning
and hyphenation. I still think that people might need to build weird
accents every now and then. At least I would need to - we sometimes
need accents for stressing pronunciation (most of them are present in
"el" just because other languages consider it to be a separate letter,
but see the very strange definition at the end of enco-def.tex ;) and
it would be a pity to take that strength of TeX away. I prefer having
a couple of badly kerned words (most are OK anyway) than having to
make my own glyphs and asking other people to compile those documents
on their computers.

I don't claim that there's a need to have both uc and lc variants, but
at least the lc variant should be present.

And another point: Antykwa Poltawskiego has it's own encoding defined
for example. I guess they're going to complete the font soon in the
same way as they did with Torunska, but currently ConTeXt uses
modified font, so that the font fits into the ec and texnansi encoding
with some empty slots in it. There is no "Ccaron" present in the font,
but I could imagine that ConTeXt could use ANTP. with "el" encoding
and once it would notice that there is no Ccaron present, it would
build it from C and Caron.
I'm not mentioning that because of ANTP since it will be improved
anyway, but because of other incomplete fonts that might profit from
the presence of such accents.

> > Of course some care has to be taken, so that it will also work for
> > fonts without those additional accents for uppercase characters (using
> > \iffontchar perhaps?).
>
> Indeed. I do want to avoid a strong dependency on the specific glyphs
> that appear in the font. That moves the encoding mess to *within*
> ConTeXt, which is not pretty, either.

It depends if it's automatic or not. If ConTeXt could automatically
recognize which glyphs are (not) present, it would be possible to
"play safer".

> I don't hear a lot of calls for
> them since ConTeXt moved to EC as a default encoding.

People who need them stil use texnansi ;)

But sure, I just wanted to point out some glyphs that some might find
useful, I don't claim for any of them that they should go in (except
for accents and ordfeminine/masculine/numero), they might need
discussing first.

If we're talking about Adobe: many fonts include "mu" (micro) or "Ohm"
for typesetting units. In lm and other TeX fonts this is not necessary
since there is math for it. I'm hardly ever using Adobe fonts, so I
can't really judge if this might be useful or not.

Mojca

Re: Dense encoding, part II

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi,

Here is my two cents:

I agree with Mojca that lots of accents (both uppercase and
lowercase) would be nice to have, just in case.

I would really like to see the ascii versions of the keyboard
symbols: circumflex, doublequote and tilde etc. (Texnansi normally
has a sort of orphaned accent instead of the ascii symbol, which is
not all that usable)

Then there are straightforward symbols like copyright, registered
and trademark;

The currencies (at least euro, dollar, pound, yen, but preferably
many more)

A set of itemization bullets and dashes (some fonts have square ones)

The 'text-style' calculus operations like multiply and divide,
plus and minus, plusminus, arrowleft and arrow right, text fractions.

I guess there are still missing punctuation characters as well.

Also, as many units and symbols that can appear in running text
as possible please. centigrade and perthousan, but also some greek
letters like micro, Ohm, alpha & beta (biology), gamma (radiology).
These symbols are normally considered part of the text, so they should
not depend on math mode. For example, if your write \beta-blocker,
you want the \beta to be bold sans-serif inside a bold sans-serif
section head.

Greetings, Taco