Xref: utzoo comp.text.tex:6247 comp.fonts:2090 Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!ukc!ox-prg!culhua!Damian.Cugley From: Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex,comp.fonts Subject: (Font design) Do people really need these characters? Message-ID: Date: 15 Mar 91 16:28:05 GMT Sender: news@prg.ox.ac.uk Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK Lines: 49 I'm designing a new, sanserif METAFONT font called Malvern, and I am wondering just what characters I ought to be including -- space is short. My aim is to include practically everything except maths and the IPA, so I have small caps and med. caps, lots of figures, various currency symbols, quote marks, daggers, punctuation, and diurse special letters etc. On the other hand, I don't want to include characters just because I have seen them mentioned in other fonts (and IPA and proper Anglo-Saxon letters will have to be put in a second font file). I would like some indication that someone, somewhere, actually uses that symbol... The proposed character encoding in TUGboat 11#4, includes an `eng' (the letter `n', with a tail, used to mean an `ng' sound in the IPA) together with its capital equivalent (a backwards `N' with a tail). What language, if any, is this letter used in? It is listed in my printers' dictionary as used in African languages -- but grouped with several other IPA letters not included in the 11#4 encoding. The PostScript fonts and the 11#4 encoding include a per-mille sign (which looks like % with the bottom bowl doubled) and 11#4 also has a per-million sign (% with bottom bowl tripled)! Are these signs *actually used*? Ohm and mho signs (cap. Omega and inverted cap. Omega). Are mhos used much these days (rather than seimens?). Florin sign -- an unslanted italic `f'. Is this counted as a separate symbol in whatever country that uses it (the UK pound sign is an example of a script letter that has become a symbol in its own right) or is an italic `f' usually used? Do <> have any use? French, as I understand it, uses nested <> guillemets for quotes inside quotes, but is this universal? (I would like to include single guillments for consistency with using `` ,, '' to get other sorts of double quote mark, but there's no point if there is no such thing as a single guillemet.) Thanks in advance (sorry, should that be advTHANKSance?) /-------------------------\ | Damian Cugley | | Computing Laboratory | /-----------------------------------------\ | 11 Keble Road | | JANet : pdc@uk.ac.oxford.prg | | Oxford OX1 3QD | | Internet: pdc@prg.oxford.ac.uk | | Great Britain | | BITNET : PDC%UK.AC.OXFORD.PRG@UKACRL | | +44 865 273838 x73199 | | UUCP : pdc%uk.ac.oxford.prg@ukc.uucp | \-------------------------/ \-----------------------------------------/