Turkish idotaccent problem, lacks Unicode in Glyphs 2.3, should be 0069

Glyphs
1

I have a project for a display font, all letters are uppercase for latin, cyrillic and greek. I have a problem when I am testing with Turkish text. The dotted I (İ) is not displaying for the lowercase glyph.

I am trying to test Idotaccent and idotaccent with different Turkish texts. My font is all uppercase and lowercase dottet i should display as a dottet capital I ->İ. When I convert text from lowercase to uppercase, the letter (dottet small letter i) displays as I, it is incorrect.

I thought it could be a language code problem connected to either copying text or converting with software from lowercase to uppercase. So I have also tried typing the letters directly.

When I change my keyboard on os x to turkish and type the key for the English keyboard shift S and just S I should in my all caps font get İ and İ. Instead I get İ and I. I am testing everything in Illustrator CS3.

I have tried to delete and create the glyph idotaccent, then code for localization is automatically created. (languagesystem latn TRK;) But the glyph idottaccent is without a Unicode identity. It should be 0069 but is blank.

When I open Glyph Info and search for idot I find that idotaccent and idotaccent.sc is without any Unicode identification. The İ letter Idotaccent had Unicode o130 in Glyph Info, and I suspect that is why it works when I test it.

Could lack of Unicode for idotaccent be the problem for why I cannot seem to get to type the idotaccent glyph?

2

The answer to your problem may lie here: https://www.glyphsapp.com/tutorials/localize-your-font-turkish

3

I have tried to follow the guide to Turkish localization, and of course I could have made a mistake.

I do have idotless (in all caps that is I) and dotaccentcomb in my font (the dot over a capital I).

I generate a idotaccent from the idotless and dotaccentcomb.

When I test in Glyph, I turn of features Turkish, I have Turkish keyboard in os x, and write Shift S and I get İ, (capital dotted I), and I write S and get the regular i glyph (in my all caps a I) from the Latin alphabet.

I now can see the Latin i, is 0069 in Unicode.

According to http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/turkish-i18n.html the lowercase dotted i should be Unicode 0069

Unicode 0069 is LATIN SMALL LETTER I (i)

In my all capital letters, latin small letter i is I, and is dotless, since in Latin there is no dot.

So when I try to write a dotted i in Turkish, I get the I from the Latin glyph. I thought I would be getting the idotaccent.

It seems only Idotaccent is in play in my font with feature: languagesystem latn TRK;

Is this perhaps then a problem with making an all capital font? Or should idotaccent be used instead when the feature for Turkish is in use?

4

just a spelling mistake, I turn on the features Turkish, to test in Glyphs

5

You only need idotaccent (a copy of i without a Unicode value) if you have small caps in your font, because the conversion from lowercase to small caps is done with an OpenType substitution.

If you do not have small caps, then all you need are these four glyphs:

i idotless
I Idotaccent

And not the font, but the layout engine (in combination with your keyboard layout) is taking care of UC/LC conversion.

6

OK, the explanation makes sense :slight_smile: , but at the same I see a problem due to the font being all caps.

I have four glyphs:
i -> in my all caps it is I
idotless -> in all caps it is I
I -> in all caps it is I
Idotaccent -> it is İ

So the problem is that I have four glyphs with three I and one İ. I lack a İ.

The layout engine do not know the font is in all caps. So if it goes to glyph i (unicode 0069) and in Turkish layout get the glyph i it displays I (as in Latin not as in Turkish).

And I cannot edit the glyph in i (0069) to a dottet capital i, İ, because then English and German, etc, would get İ instead of I when the glyph i is used.

How is this solved for all caps?

7

For an all-cap font, add i.loclTRK that looks like Idotaccent. You can do that with Glyph > Add Glyphs… and entering Idotaccent=i.loclTRK, then pressing the Generate button. Don’t forget to regenerate/update the features.

8

Situation now is I can make it work in Glyphs but not in Illustrator, but I conclude using idotaccent and Glyps´s code is a sufficient solution.
I tried just before I read your message to duplicate the glyph i

and create a glyph named i.loclTKR
this glyph is renamed automatically into idotaccent.

When I as you suggest, try Add Glyph Idotaccent=i.loclTRK and Generate I get the message it already exists in the file, I overwrite. But it seems to take the glyph place for idotaccent.

There are some details I haven´t noticed in Glyphs. In language features code for replacing i with idotaccent has been automatically generated (I should have been aware of this code, but I was not, so my fault)
language TRK;
sub i by idotaccent;

It means that if the code is activated it should give me the dotted i correctly.

I then look and find that I haven´t tested in Glyph correctly

with Features I have to turn on >Localized features and turn on >Turkish
Then I have my keyboard on os x on Turkish
Then Shift S gives me İ and S gives me İ, which is correct.
And I can paste Turkish text into glyph and in my all caps the correct İ comes out

So it works in Glyphs, and I assume if Open Type is correctly implemented with locl features.

But I still worry, since it does not solve the problem in Illustrator CS 3, where with Turkish keyboard, i is still displayed as I.
Perhaps I just have to let it go

There is a Turkish made all caps in Myfonts, https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ahmet-altun/ephesus/
where I type a Turkish text üzerine
and it displays as ÛZERINE

So it seems I have to accept that I can set it up, but if features are not implemented it does not matter.

I think I conclude then that I have the correct glyphs and correct code generated automatically in my all caps, and that it is important in all caps to have dotted i in idotaccent.

9

The keyboard setting has no influence in Illustrstor. You have to set the language in Illustrator directly. The the locl feature should be activated.

10

Of course, the software you want to use it in must be able to handle OpenType features, and set languages. I am not sure older versions of Illustrator can do this.

11

I do not know the limit of Illustator CS
But I use it to print out what I make in Glyphs to test on a native user of a language I want to support

In Illustrator there is a menu under Type called Glyps, it displays all the glyphs in the font, there I can pick and insert into the text.

I have a workable solution. Thank you very much for clarifying.

Quite a relief :slight_smile:

12

Testing fonts is much better in Indesing. It has better OpenType support and reloads the fonts better.

13

I found the turkish tutorial a little terse on how to deal with ligatures…

You can read about my blind grasping at straws here :smiley:

Has anyone else solved this already?

14

The Turkish idotaccent (=i.TRK) ligatures must not lose their dots. The idotless ligatures must be without a dot. That is, if you have ligatures in the first place. I prefer a solution where ligatures are not necessary.

15

ah, got it :slight_smile:

Does anyone have any example fonts that have such ligatures?