Alpha and kappa are a bit too close to their latin lookalikes

[Enivex]

From left to right: a, alpha, k, kappa

Both could use some further "flourishes" to make them more distinct.

• The only apparent difference between and alpha is the tiny curly tail.
• The difference between k and kappa is just an ascender, which is fine in the case of eta versus n (descender). For kappa, it's a little more problematic, because k does not always have an ascender

[khaledhosny]

For italic a, we can switch to double storey variant. Not sure what to do for san-serif k/kappa.

[khaledhosny]

78:

80:

[berrymot]

i think changing the shape of alpha would be better than having two story a. something more like maybe

[khaledhosny]

Feel free to submit such a change.

[berrymot]

how does one edit a .glyph? (new to this, sorry)

[MAZ06]

You mean a sans version of this? This is from Noto Serif LGC.

[berrymot]

basically yeah

[MAZ06]

Maybe @Mercury13 could draw it.

[simoncozens]

This was closed automatically when the kappa PR was merged, but alpha is still open.

[MAZ06]

I was surprised to see the lowercase alpha so similar to the lowercase a. If a new sans alpha is drawn, I suggest it get added to Noto Sans LGC as the default glyph and the current sans alpha be moved to being an alternative.

[moyogo]

The Greek in Noto Sans was updated a couple of years ago. Are those not adequate?

[MAZ06]

Wow that was a fast reply!

The Greek in Noto Sans seems adequate to me. Obviously a Greek speaker would read the lowercase alpha correctly, but I feel like a lowercase alpha should look closer to its Noto Serif counterpart. At least in my opinion.

What do the Unicode docs say about it?

[Mercury13]

@MAZ06 is absolutely right. Need mathematical alpha.

[khaledhosny]

The Greek in Noto Sans was updated a couple of years ago. Are those not adequate?

We seem to be using a mix of the old and new Greek, I opened https://github.com/notofonts/math/issues/81 to track this.