Suggestion to change 'languages' in the sidebar to 'notation systems.'

Glyphs
1

While I was studying the working of fonts, I added two new categories to the navigation bar:

I think it is an enrichment to also support these notation systems in Glyphs, because they are whole systems ‘an sich.’
Of course, the title ‘language’ should also be switched to ‘notation systems’ or something better suitable.

If anybody thinks it is an good idea, I would be glad to hear it. If anybody thinks it is a bad idea I would be even more curious to hear why not. :smile:
If there are better proposals for the SubGroups, I am still willing to change these.

The corresponding files are attached. (I have changed the extensions in order to be allowed to post it here.)
The location of these files was Glyphs.app/Contents/Frameworks/GlyphsCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources
(153.5 KB, change the extension back to .plist)
Languages.ttf
(8.1 KB, change the extension back to .xml)
languagesDict.ttf

New icons to place in Glyphs.app/Resources
(change the extensions back to .pdf)
BrailleTemplate.ttf (13.9 KB)
Musictemplate.ttf (16.6 KB)

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2

This is a very valid proposal.

Only I don’t link ‘notation systems’. Maybe ‘writing systems’, still to long but a bit friendlier. I think we can keep the ‘Languages’ for now. It was never actually accurate, Latin is a writing system, not a language.

And maybe we put both in one group. They are rarely used and if we start looking in that direction, we will come up with even more stuff.

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And I added .pdf and .zip to the allowed file types.

4

:+1: for the subfolder and the .pdf support.

yes, i also thought about writing system, but how far is it 'written?'
And what about just ‘systems’ or ‘collections?’ These are more generic.

5

If change is wanted I would change Languages to either Alphabets or Scripts because either of those are what comprise languages. The entries under Categories perfectly describe what comprises Writing Systems.

Personally I’m fine with them the way they are now, but changes might be helpful to others.

6

Alphabets sounds good.

7

And I had prepared one other ‘alphabeth,’ but I had to do some research before it was more or less ready: Esperanto.
It can be placed under ‘Latin’ or under the new folder ‘other.’

The code is pasted below, I think this set is complete. Although it is not included by default, I have added support for the ‘x,’ so there is the possibility to use the x-system for the ones who wishes. On the other side, I neglected small caps (sometimes used) as I personally do not think they are an additional value for now. If users of Esperanto says to change this set (or to remove the x), it is possible.

Two glyphs for the IPA are already present in the IPA-list: esh, ezh
Only ts, breveinvertedbelowcomb, breveinverteddoublecomb, doublebrevebelowcomb are missing. But it depends on how the IPA is represented: for the different representations of IPA, click on the symbols in the first table in the link below. I expect not all representations of IPA-glyphs have separate Unicode numbers. For the symbols Voiceless alveolar affricate, Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate, Voiced palato-alveolar affricate I only could find the separate parts. Also for the two glyphs with a breveinvertedbelowcomb, I couldn’t retrieve any item in Unicode.

///////////////////////// code for languagesDict.xml /////////////////////////

		<dict>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>Esperanto</string>
		</dict>

///////////////////////// code for languages.plist /////////////////////////

		Esperanto = (
			A,
			B,
			C,
			Ccircumflex,
			D,
			E,
			F,
			G,
			Gcircumflex,
			H,
			Hcircumflex,
			I,
			J,
			Jcircumflex,
			K,
			L,
			M,
			N,
			O,
			P,
			R,
			S,
			Scircumflex,
			T,
			U,
			Ubreve,
			V,
			X,
			Z,
			a,
			b,
			c,
			ccircumflex,
			d,
			e,
			f,
			g,
			gcircumflex,
			h,
			hcircumflex,
			i,
			j,
			jcircumflex,
			k,
			l,
			m,
			n,
			o,
			p,
			r,
			s,
			scircumflex,
			t,
			u,
			ubreve,
			v,
			x,
			z,
			ordfeminine,
			nmod,
			tmod,
			nbspace,
			space,
			spesmilo,
			brevecomb,
			circumflexcomb,
			breve,
			circumflex,
		);
8

After the Esperanto, really my last post for now (I know, I post many, but I have been busy for a while on this):

My students (and to be honest, myself also) like it to have visual examples of what belongs where. So in the beginning of the languages.plist I added next code for quick access to the glyphs:

	Letter = {
		Ligature = (
			fi,
			fl,
		);
		Smallcaps = (
			A.sc,
			B.sc,
			C.sc,
			D.sc,
			E.sc,
			F.sc,
			G.sc,
			H.sc,
			I.sc,
			J.sc,
			K.sc,
			L.sc,
			M.sc,
			N.sc,
			O.sc,
			P.sc,
			Q.sc,
			R.sc,
			S.sc,
			T.sc,
			U.sc,
			V.sc,
			W.sc,
			X.sc,
			Y.sc,
			Z.sc,
			a.sc,
			b.sc,
			c.sc,
			d.sc,
			e.sc,
			f.sc,
			g.sc,
			h.sc,
			i.sc,
			j.sc,
			k.sc,
			l.sc,
			m.sc,
			n.sc,
			o.sc,
			p.sc,
			q.sc,
			r.sc,
			s.sc,
			t.sc,
			u.sc,
			v.sc,
			w.sc,
			x.sc,
			y.sc,
			z.sc, 
		);
	};

And the part under fractions I replaced with:

Fraction = (
			fraction,
			onefraction,
			onehalf,
			zerothird,
			onethird,
			twothirds,
			onequarter,
			threequarters,
			onefifth,
			twofifths,
			threefifths,
			fourfifths,
			onesixth,
			fivesixths,
			oneseventh,
			twosevenths,
			threesevenths,
			foursevenths,
			fivesevenths,
			sixsevenths,
			oneeighth,
			threeeighths,
			fiveeighths,
			seveneighths,
			oneninth,
			twoninths,
			fourninths,
			fiveninths,
			sevenninths,
			eightninths,
			onetenth,
			threetenths,
			seventenths,
			ninetenths,
			onehundredth,
			oneelevenths,
			twoelevenths,
			threeelevenths,
			fourelevenths,
			fiveelevenths,
			sixelevenths,
			sevenelevenths,
			eightelevenths,
			nineelevenths,
			tenelevenths,
			onetwelvths,
			fivetwelvths,
			seventwelvths,
			eleventwelvths,
			zero.dnom,
			one.dnom,
			two.dnom,
			three.dnom,
			four.dnom,
			five.dnom,
			six.dnom,
			seven.dnom,
			eight.dnom,
			nine.dnom,
			zero.numr,
			one.numr,
			two.numr,
			three.numr,
			four.numr,
			five.numr,
			six.numr,
			seven.numr,
			eight.numr,
			nine.numr,
		);

I post it here, because I hope others are also helped with the work I had done.
Only the SmallCaps shows 26 glyphs, in stead of the 52 expected…

9

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Chinese is technically no more an “alphabet” than Music is a “language.”

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10

“Chinese” is just a word which would be used to describe the collection of glyphs, be they letters, numbers, punctuation, symbols, etc. that are used to compose words into the Chinese language. The same goes for any other language.

Cliff’s Notes has this to say about music: “…written music is a language; the actual sounds of the music are purely artistic and abstract.”

It all depends upon how one wants to view things.

11

The small caps are not so easy. Because you would need all the accented glyphs, too. And I prefer the lowercase variants. If you need those regularly, add a list filter.

If you have the numerator and denominator figures, you don’t need all the precomposed fraction glyphs (or at least you shouldn’t need them, but some have a unicode value so in some rare circumstances you would need them).

I’ll have a look at the Esperanto. Normally thees groups should only include the letters that are not in the basic group. Is is very unlikely that one would build a font that is only useable in Esperanto in which case the omitting of a few letters might save space??
I couldn’t find anything about the nmod and tmod.

And for accented glyphs that have no unicode, you just type the base letter and the accent (opposite to the dead key input for the common accents on european keyboards, where you type the accent first). For the correct positioning of the accent you rely on the mark feature.

I don’t think it makes sense to include Esperanto-IPA glyphs as this is too specialized and would confuse most people.

12

Ah. This was my interpretation, because Glyphs makes two OpenType Features: c2cs and smcp, with different code. So I thought Lowercase and Uppercase were linked to different SmallCaps-glyphs. So most times, I make SmallCaps A.sc=a.sc etc. But it is good to know that there is no need to both.

And the amount of SmallCaps is indeed dependent on how large the font is. For that, I did not mention all of them.

Hmm. Ok, true if you look at it from the OpenType-way. Never mind why I sometimes design them.

I looked where I found this. It was mentioned in the Wikipedia part about punctuation, fifth paragraph:

With ordinal numerals, the adjectival a and accusative n may be superscripted: 13a or 13ª (13ᵗʰ). <

Didn’t saw it in other examples, but made those glyphs present for use. (And I now even see there is written th in stead of tn.) You may delete those if you think they are not relevant.

Agree.

13

Yes, change ‘languages’ to ‘scripts’. ‘Alphabets’ is not technically correct for writing systems like syllabaries, abugidas, abjads and the systems that use ideograms, pictograms and logograms.

14

The problem with that is that the word “script” already has a different meaning within the app (and is even a main-level menu category).

15

Hrm :smile: ‘Writing systems’ then.

An aside: script names should always be capitalised.
I think these headings in the main tab are derived from the script tags in the Glyphdata.xml file, but it looks very wrong in lowercase in the UI.

16

I was going to make a new post, but this one is already here and nothing has happened. I’m adding a bunch of scripts to the Language sidebar and it’s becoming messy. I propose following the Unicode categories at http://www.unicode.org/charts/
so that what is now Languages becomes split into Scripts and Symbols. And the subcategories would then follow the Unicode subcategories like European, African, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, etc. I don’t necessarily love all those categories, but they are already established in Unicode so why not use them?

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