Re: i18n-ISSUE-401: Clarify initial letter requirements and alignment points

James Clark wrote:

> The BASE 'hanging baseline' idea seems to be based on the assumption
> that when you have multiple point sizes of Devanagari on the same line,
> then the normal alignment is to align the head-lines.  Based on the very
> small amount of Devanagari I've seen, this assumption does not appear to
> be true. It would be very interesting to get a more authoritative answer
> on this.

This is one of those questions that can't be reliably answered by 
looking at what people have produced without taking into consideration 
the nature and possible limitations of the technology they used to 
produce it.

> On typographic first principles, head-line alignment doesn't seem a very
> plausible default.  The most common case for default alignment of
> multiple sizes is when a paragraph starts with one or more characters in
> a larger size, which are not dropped.

I'd say the general case of default alignment is when two or more 
different fonts and/or different sizes of font are used together on a 
line, of which what you describe is a rather specialised case. Now if we 
also considers what should happen with alignment when e.g. two different 
Devanagari fonts are used on the same line and also with a Latin font in 
the mix, then it seems to me we're getting into something like bidi 
territory: trying to parse which font is leading the alignment and how 
the others are meant to follow.


Oh, by the way, CSS font-size-adjust for non-European scripts would seem 
to throw up some similar issues regarding glyph topography and scaling.

JH


PS. On the subject of Indic scripts and fonts, I'm pleased to announce 
the no-fee non-commercial license release of the first three Murty 
fonts, now available from Harvard University Press in conjunction with 
the launch of the first volumes of the Murty Classical Library of India 
in Delhi yesterday. The initial fonts are Gurmukhi, Hindi Devanagari, 
and Telugu.
http://www.murtylibrary.com/mcli-fonts.php

Received on Saturday, 17 January 2015 02:48:19 UTC