New to Typophile? Accounts are free, and easy to set up.
What is the intended use of commaccent.salt?
Posted by Cristobal Henestrosa in
13 Jan 2011 — 10:00pm
13 Jan 2011 — 10:00pm
Probably this is an easy one.
For the very first time I am trying to add Central European diacritics for a font I am designing. I am using the new encodings that appear in FontLab Studio if you have installed Fontographer 5 (either the full version or the demo). I am using the encoding called “OpenType LatPro”.
I did some readings online and watched some fonts who include the glyphs proposed by this encoding and so far I think I am doing right, but I am unable to find what is commaccent.salt for.
I have read at typo.cz that “In Latvian, the use of cedilla is wrong, the correct shape of the accent is a small comma under letter. Both for technical and aesthetic reasons, the comma accent is drawn above the lower case ģ, rotated by 180 degrees”, and I am aware about Adam Twardoch’s recommendations quoted on that same page regarding Scedilla, scedilla, S with commaaccent, s with commaaccent, T with cedilla, t with cedilla, T with commaaccent, and t with commaaccent. Everything clear, but I still don’t know what to put inside the commaccent.salt slot. Any help appreciated.
User login
Support our Sponsors
15 Jan 2011 — 4:54am
The commaaccent.salt slot is indeed intended for the 180-degree rotated commaaccent which is to be placed above g. The caron.salt is intended for the "upright-acute"/"apostrophe-shaped" variant of caron, intended for use with d, t, l and L.
15 Jan 2011 — 12:19pm
Thank you Adam. That was exactly my thought, since uni0123 (ģ) is the only character that presents a variant for commaaccent, but I just wanted to be sure. And it is good to know that I was right about the caron.salt.
Thanks!
15 Jan 2011 — 12:23pm
Indeed, there is only one character that uses commaaccent.salt, yet it's still useful to make it into a component, and make uni0123 a composite glyph primarily so that the "g" glyph is a component, which makes things like hinting easier.
15 Jan 2011 — 2:54pm
Thank you for you clarification, Adam. Useful as always.
There is one other small thing I am curious about this encoding – not a problem, just wanna know the story behind the inclusion of the longs_t ligature. It is unrelated with this thread, so it will be better to start a new one. Hope you can answer me that one, too. Thanks in advance.
15 Jan 2011 — 9:13pm
I am usually rotating the composite commaaccent, aligning the bottom with a dot on i. It works and you do not need an extra glyph.
16 Jan 2011 — 4:32pm
Kristians,
There are, of course, many ways to achieve a certain goal. Having an extra glyph is the simplest solution, and works well with various automatic glyph-creation mechanisms. Also, it works with all tools. Rotated components may work with some font-creation tools, but may not work with others.
Best,
Adam