Looking at fonts from Ireland, the dot should not be on the ascender of the b, but preferably on the bowl. So the Apple keyboard shown above has a design bug. Do you agree Irish folks?
I think this is a very good question to bring up. And what about d, f, h, t? Otherwise always centered, I assume? Can someone give reliable advice on what is acceptable in Gaelic dotted letter designs? Then I can put together a âLocalize Your Fontâ tutorial.
This is correct. The dot is over the bowl or otherwise optically centered over the letter. It is never centered over the ascender. See below â
https://s28.postimg.org/4ahlqu80t/seimhus.png
http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland//images/uploads/content/1916-CnG-ClaidheamhSoluis1.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/77/dd/d5/77ddd5924e52d315ca151e1b55ef2152.jpg
Is it just these letters? What about, e.g., h? Does it not exist in Gaelic?
No, itâs just used for those consonants. It represents h in certain situations. For example teach (house) could be written as teaÄ. The vowels can have fadas (acute accents).
H does exist in Irish, The SĂ©imhĂș (dot) is mainly used as a replacement for h when a word is modified, eg: bean (woman) an bhean or an ážean (the woman).
The old alphabet had only 18 letters â
a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u
â although some of the other latin characters now appear in imported words.
Hope that makes sense.
I live in a Gaeltacht area of native Irish speakers and the lenited consonants are still in use.
No-one is questioning if they are actually in use. The question is, if one should add them to contemporary fonts that aim to support Irish.
Itâs a shame that itâs not part of our usual set (by âourâ I mean our industry). The number of speakers is above one million, though there may be other unsupported European languages with bigger number. And for me as a British dweller, itâs double shame to not support my neighbour.
And donât forget the Tironian et â when you support Gaelic!
Sorry for the delayed reply, itâs been a busy Christmas. Personally, I would like to see more support for Irish lenited consonants. Although they have been dropped in âstandardâ Irish ( which is compulsory in schools) it is still in use among native Irish speakers. The âdotâ implementations in many fonts donât conform to the traditional Irish usage â the dot is usually misplaced.
Thanks to Glyphs, Iâm well progressed in developing an Irish font with traditional characters, seimhĂșs and alternates.
At the moment I have three masters, with most of the main characters and punctuation. I still have to develop numerals and other characters.
@Frode â From a commercial point of view, itâs probably not worth your time developing for a native Irish audience, much as Iâd like to see it. This may improve in time, there is a thriving Gaelscoil (Irish speaking school) program which is proving popular. They are using standard Irish, however.
My interest is in preserving the old forms in a modern context â providing a modern humanist font instead of tacky uncials.
[edit] The number 7 is often used as a replacement for the & in âstandard Irishâ.