Inconsistent Cyrillic glyph variants between Noto Sans Italic and Noto Serif Italic

dscorbett commented 4 years ago

Fonts

NotoSans-Italic.otf NotoSerif-Italic.otf

Where the fonts came from, and when

Site: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/blob/c5481f3a1b57d54190a4e7881103033fbbbcec0c/unhinted/otf/NotoSans/NotoSans-Italic.otf Site: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/blob/c5481f3a1b57d54190a4e7881103033fbbbcec0c/unhinted/otf/NotoSerif/NotoSerif-Italic.otf Date: 2022-05-07

Font versions

Noto Sans Italic: Version 2.008 Noto Serif Italic: Version 2.007

Issue

Noto Sans Italic and Noto Serif Italic use inconsistent strategies for the Cyrillic glyph variants U+1C81, U+1C85, and U+1C87. In Noto Sans Italic, they are simply slanted from the upright glyphs, even though Noto Sans Italic uses cursive glyphs for Cyrillic italics. In Noto Serif Italic, they are indistinguishable from the letters of which they are variants.

Cyrillic has two glyph variants of te: one with one leg in the middle and one with three legs. Modern Cyrillic uses the one-legged te in upright and oblique styles and the three-legged te in cursive style. Since Noto uses the cursive (as opposed to oblique) style for the italic fonts, the italic U+0442 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TE and U+1C85 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER THREE-LEGGED TE should look identical. Руководство къ ариѳметикѣ is an example of a fairly recent book (1804) that uses the three-legged variant in both upright and cursive italics.

Modern Cyrillic does not use the glyph variants U+1C81 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LONG-LEGGED DE and U+1C87 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TALL YAT. @moyogo recommends in https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/issues/1825#issuecomment-678632512 that U+1C87 be slanted. I recommend the same for U+1C81. That is, Noto Serif Italic should be changed to match Noto Sans Italic for these two characters.