Many anchors are not added with Set Anchors

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When using “Set Anchors”, “Reset Anchors”, or similar automatic functions to add anchors, some anchors are not added automatically. GlyphsData.xml is incomplete for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic as many orthographies use combining marks with letters that are currently not covered.

It seems there are either obvious inconsistencies and general omissions.

One obvious inconsistency is for example “vturned” having anchors=“top, bottom” but “Vturned” having no anchors defined.
So using “Set Anchors” will add top and bottom anchors to vturned but non to Vturned. Yet both are used in systems that use combining marks, for example Northern Emberá, Wounmeu or Eastern Dan use the letter in lowercase and uppercase with top marks. Other systems also use the letter with bottom marks, for example Oneida.

Generally, if a font has a combining mark with an anchor, all the base letters, or at least all base letters that already have some anchors and their case variant, should have an anchor for it.
For example, there’s no reason for “a” to have anchors=“top, bottom, ogonek” but for “eopen” or “vturned” to only have anchors=“top, bottom”, especially considering ɛ̨ or ʌ̨ are or have been used.

1 Like
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Thanks for bringing this up.

We usual add stuff to GlyphData when there is someone how has some knowledge about that script or character range. I like to have meaningful info. So a “missing” anchor can be on purpose if that character is never used with combining marks.
So we depend on feedback like this. I’ll add those you mentioned above. If you find more, please send me a note.

Do Eopen or Vturned need the ogonek anchor, too?

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We usual add stuff to GlyphData when there is someone how has some knowledge about that script or character range.

@GeorgSeifert
Good, let’s do it. What do you need?

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I need a list of name with the needed anchors.

vturned: top, bottom, ogonek

And they can use some extra positioning rules if needed: Feature request: smarter Set Anchors - #3 by GeorgSeifert