Placement of accents on italic fonts

Dear font experts,

Maybe somebody can help me with this question (or suggest a better list)?

It is very clear that on italic forms of letters, accents/diacritic
placement has to be adjusted. For example, accents above the letter
would move to the right, diacritics below would move to the right.

I thought at first that the diacritics would move roughly by an amount
corresponding to the distance of the general slanting transformation
underlying the italic shaping at the relevant hight. However, looking
at various fonts that actually have designed italic versions (as
opposed to just mechanically generated slanted glyphs), it looks as
if in general, the diacritic moves *less* than the geometric transform
would make us expect. Can somebody confirm that this is somewhat like
a general rule?

I hope I have expressed myself halfway clearly. Maybe my question
is clearer with the following example:


Example:

    ^         ^      ^      ^
    |        /       /       /
    |       /       /       /
    |      /       /       /

    a)     b)      c)      d)


a) the original, upright, glyph with circumflex accent

b) italic/slanted glyph where the circumflex moves according
    to the geometric transform

c) italic glyph where the circumflex moves, but not as much

d) itacic glyph where the accent is just placed straight over
    the center of the base letter.


Expressed in these examples, my question is: For well-designed
fonts, is c) (rather than b) or d)) a good approximation?


Many thanks in advance for your help.    Regards,    Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 25 September 2002 06:50:40 UTC