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IBM / plex

The package of IBM’s typeface, IBM Plex.
SIL Open Font License 1.1
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Modifier letter apostrophe is hard to see #575

Closed flashymittens closed 1 month ago

flashymittens commented 1 month ago

ʼ U+02BC Modifier letter apostrophe, IMO, is hard to see, unlike, say, right single quotation mark.

An example

In the picture above are used:

  1. U+0027 apostrophe.
  2. U+2019 right single quotation mark.
  3. U+02BC modifier letter apostrophe (once at the end of a word and once again inside of a word).

Noto fonts are used for comparison, although I think those simply use the same glyph as a right single quotation mark, which is probably fine, but I’m not an expert on that.

Would be nice to have the character more readable, if possible.

BoldMonday commented 1 month ago

The glyph in question is used as the diacritic in glyphs dcaron lcaron tcaron and Lcaron. AFAIK that’s the main purpose and in that context the weight and proportions are correct. It serves a different purpose than single quotation marks which need to work on their own.

image
flashymittens commented 1 month ago

@BoldMonday From my understanding, modifier letters are supposed to, unlike diacritics, display as separate characters. Which they do here, for example, with L and IBM Plex Sans:

L with caron vs L plus modifier letter apostrophe

But there is lots of space. Is this how it is supposed to look? That feels weird to me.

BoldMonday commented 1 month ago

Check the unicode block in question and you will see that many modifier letters are diacritics. For example there is U+02CA MODIFIER LETTER ACUTE ACCENT. Yes, they can be typed on their own and have their own spacing. But in many fonts their purpose is to act as building blocks for accented glyphs. Certainly that is the whole purpose of the glyph in question in IBM Plex.

flashymittens commented 1 month ago

@BoldMonday But there is already a combining acute accent for that. Err… I guess Unicode simply likes being weird. Let’s go with that 🤷

BoldMonday commented 1 month ago

We are talking about two different things here. :)

It is not about typing the character in question as a font user. (Because that is what combining diacritics are for.)

It is about using the shape of the character in question as a reusable element when creating accented characters as a font designer. The character U+013D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH CARON exists as a precomposed glyph in IBM Plex.

flashymittens commented 1 month ago

@BoldMonday Hmm… I don’t think Unicode registers characters solely for font designers. The block is called Spacing Modifier Letters, so, I presume, a character should be a spacing character, which it is. But:

MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE = apostrophe

  • glottal stop, glottalization, ejective
  • many languages use this as a letter of their alphabets
  • used as a tone marker in Bodo and Dogri
  • indicates vowel elongation, or various truncations and ellipsis in Maithili
  • used as a modifier letter in the Lisu script
  • 2019 ’ is the preferred character for a punctuation apostrophe

― https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf

Second point seems to indicate that it is, sometimes, a letter, which what I should have mentioned from the beginning, I suppose. Maybe there should be less space and it should be a bit more visible, or so I thought. In my examples I’ve used it like a letter character, not a “punctuation apostrophe”.

But, I guess, “design choice” is also a valid answer. Can’t say I have anything else to add, so‐o‐o… Thank you for chatting, I guess, sorry for taking your time 😅