Technical: Remove Romanian language glyph substitution for characters U+015E, U+015F, U+0162, U+0163 ('locl' table)

[Mihai Capotă]

Please remove Romanian language glyph substitution for characters U+015E, U+015F, U+0162, U+0163.

Currently, when the language is set to Romanian, glyphs for characters U+015E, U+015F, U+0162, U+0163 (S and T cedilla) are substituted with the glyphs of characters U+0218, U+0219, U+021A, U+021B (S and T comma). For all other languages, the proper cedilla glyphs are used. This creates confusion among Romanian users.

For more details, see bug #615565, particularly comment 16:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/615565/comments/16

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

I think it would be a good idea to remove this (comment out in the source code) before wider release. Going forward we can /add/ to the font family (/if/ later proved necessary) more easily than removing from it... it provides that extra maneuvering space.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Cristian, Mihai: did this get done for 0.68 (in Ubuntu 10.10/maverick now at the moment).

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

Paul, it did not.

I tried the ttf-ubuntu-font-family_0.68+ufl-0ubuntu1~ppa1~lucid1_all.deb from the PPA.

I also downloaded the source package from Maverick [1] and looked at the FontLab source file Ubuntu-R-designsource.vfb using Vim. I can still see the locl code. It's not commented. I could generate a patch if it would help.

[1] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/ubuntu-font-family-sources/0.68+ufl-0ubuntu1/+files/ubuntu-font-family-sources_0.68+ufl.orig.tar.gz

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

Here's a patch against the 0.69 package commenting out the locl substitutions for MOL and ROM.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Mihai, thank you!

[Malcolm Wooden (malcolm-daltonmaag)]

According to Unicode the cedilla accent is not correct for Romanian. The comma is the correct diacritic for use under s and t.
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf
The Moldavian and Romanian localization feature is intended to enforce this defined standard.
If this feature is removed documents that have shown as correct on other O/S's will show incorrect when used in Ubuntu.

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

Malcolm, the document you referenced says:
"the character 0219 ș should be used instead for Romanian"

The standard mentions characters. The locl feature does not change the character, it only changes the glyph. Changing the glyph does not make it right. This substitution does not enforce the standard.

There is a big problem with regard to the correct character usage in Romanian texts. This glyph substitution only makes things worse by making it impossible to distinguish between the correct and incorrect characters. On the hand, I've never seen users complain about glyph display, as long as it's consistent: both cedilla characters use cedilla glyphs and both comma characters use comma glyphs.

Furthermore, the substitution breaks the rendering of Turkish words which appear in Romanian texts.

As for other operating systems, please read Cristian Secară's opinion. He has helped greatly with correct Romanian usage on Windows and is being referenced on the issue of diacritics by Microsoft [1]. Please see the original bug #615565, particularly comment 16 [2].

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/romania/Diacritice.aspx
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/615565/comments/16

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

2010-12-14 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.70

  Release notes 0.70:
  * (Design) Add Capitalised version of glyphs and kern. (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) DM (LP: #676538, #677446)
  * (Design) Give acute and grave a slight upright move to more match
    the Hungarian double acute angle. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #656647)
  * (Design) Shift Bold Italic accent glyphs to be consistent with the
    Italic. (BdIt only) DM (LP: #677449)
  * (Design) Check spacing and kerning of dcaron, lcaron and
    tcaron. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #664722)
  * (Design) Add positive kerning to () {} [] to open out the
    combinations so they are less like a closed box. (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #671228)
  * (Design) Change design of acute.asc and check highest points (Bd
    and BdIt only) DM
  * (Production) Update <case> feature. DM (LP: #676538, #676539)
  * (Production) Remove Romanian locl feature. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
    (LP: #635615)
  * (Production) Update Copyright information with new
    strings. "Copyright 2010 Canonical Ltd. Licensed under the Ubuntu
    Font Licence 1.0" Trademark string "Ubuntu and Canonical are
    registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd." (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) DM
    (LP: #677450)
  * (Design) Check aligning of hyphen, math signs em, en, check braces
    and other brackets. 16/11 (LP: #676465)
  * (Production) Pixel per em indicator added at U+F000 (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #615787)
  * (Production) Version number indicator added at U+EFFD (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #640623)
  * (Production) fstype bit set to 0 - Editable (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
    (LP: #648406)

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

I tested it. It is indeed fixed. Thank you for taking care of this bug.