Re: Initial Letter Styling in Ethiopic Documents

Good Morning,

Some examples of Initial Letter styles used in other scripts and languages
to help illustrate the issue:

  https://w3c.github.io/type-samples/?feature=initial-letter

I believe these styles are all examples of "Drop Caps". While I'm sure some
authors have tried it in Amharic and related languages, I haven't observed
it is a regular practice.

If anyone can identify the Drop Caps (or another) initial letter style as
important for an Ethiopic writing practice, please speak up and direct us
to examples if you can. A related question would be:  is web browser and
word processor support for drop caps in Latin script sufficient for
Ethiopic?  If not, what should be adjusted?

thanks,

-Daniel


On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 7:27 PM Daniel Yacob <yacob@geez.org> wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> I was just looking over the ELReq Gap Analysis document that Richard
> posted last time and thought that we could make an exercise of tackling an
> easy one that is in a "Needs research" status. At least I think its easy...
> can people here share their views on the topic:
>
> 3.5 Initial letter styling
>
> https://w3c.github.io/elreq/gap-analysis/#initialletter
>
> "Does the browser or ereader correctly handle special styling of the
> initial letter of a line or paragraph, such as for drop caps or similar?"
>
>
> My response here would be "Yes, browsers and ereaders do correctly handle
> initial letter styling by virtue of there being no special requirements in
> Ethiopic publishing to support."  The layout topic is effectively Not
> Applicable -at least that's my experience thus far.
>
> Can people respond as to whether or not you agree, and if you are aware of
> any special cases for initial letter styling, please describe it your reply.
>
> thanks!
>
> -Daniel
>