Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24

[Joe Wells]

"Steve White" <address@hidden> writes:

> Joe,
>
>>
>>  • The older glyphs for the quote characters (i.e., ', ", ", ') are
>>   much nicer for a screen font.  It would be nice to be able to get
>>   the old glyphs somehow.

By the way, by the last sentence I meant “it would be nice if there
was some way to select the older glyphs without changing the default
glyphs for these characters”.

> It seems to me that yours is an aesthetic judgement about the shapes
> of the glyphs.  On second look, I agree.  My "curly" quotes look out
> of place in this face.
>
> The standard specifies that the glyphs should be distinct from certain
> other glyphs, but their shape is only suggested.

Actually (unfortunately), it turns out there are some fairly specific
guidelines about the shape of these characters.

I like the old freefont shapes from 2003-06-24 better, but the person
who made the bug report about German use of “ (U+201C LEFT DOUBLE
QUOTATION MARK) and ‘ (U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) seems to be
correct (unfortunately!).

As evidence for their correctness, here are the entries in the
official NamesList.txt file:

2018    LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
        = SINGLE TURNED COMMA QUOTATION MARK
        * this is the preferred glyph (as opposed to 201B)
        x (apostrophe - 0027)
        x (modifier letter turned comma - 02BB)
        x (heavy single turned comma quotation mark ornament - 275B)

201C    LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
        = DOUBLE TURNED COMMA QUOTATION MARK
        * this is the preferred glyph (as opposed to 201F)
        x (quotation mark - 0022)
        x (heavy double turned comma quotation mark ornament - 275D)
        x (reversed double prime quotation mark - 301D)

Notice that both of these characters have alternate names that include
the wording “TURNED COMMA”.  In the context of Unicode character
names, “TURNED” means “rotated 180°”.

The older freefont glyphs for these characters are actually much
closer to these other characters:

201B    SINGLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK
        = SINGLE REVERSED COMMA QUOTATION MARK
        * glyph variant of 2018
        x (modifier letter reversed comma - 02BD)

201F    DOUBLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK
        = DOUBLE REVERSED COMMA QUOTATION MARK
        * glyph variant of 201C

In the context of Unicode character names, “REVERSED” means “vertical
mirror image (flipped on the vertical axis)”.  The comments indicate
that the glyphs for U+201B and U+201F are considered wrong for U+2018
and U+201C.

> In previous releases, the quote-left U2018 was just wrong.  Since I
> think of these as "curly" quotes, I tried to make them curly, and
> distinct from "primes" (U2032+).  But the standard doesn't say the
> quotes have to be distinct from the primes.  I think cases where it
> would matter, would be very rare, and questionable.

I disagree on this point.  I personally find it very important that
primes and quotes are distinct, because I use both heavily.  (I'm a
mathematician.)

> So basically, I put the shapes back as they were, like the comma in
> Mono, and just made sure the directions and senses of the quotes
> matched the standard.
>
> To appear in the next release.

Can you e-mail PNG images of what the changed glyphs look like?

-- 
Joe


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