Style: Itatic: ambiguity between 'æ' and 'œ'

[Jacques DAFFLON]

The italicised æ looks more like an œ which can be confusing. This is an artifact created by the cursive italic a, which, when combined with the e to form an italicised æ looks virtually identical to œ.

David says: "The only word I have in English is Encyclopædia so it is not really important but in some other languages it can be as in French where some words coming from Latin use the æ like ex æquo (equal), and also Latin words for scientific use like tænia (tapeworm). But you can lose easily the meaning of a word if you misread the œ..."

Please treat the italicised æ in a custom, appropriate fashion.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

 status confirmed

Yes, I think this is an accidental consequence of the italicised a
styling, and should be addressed specially as a corner case in the
italicised "ae" design.

Mark

[Nicholas Christian Langkjær Ipsen (ncli)]

That's how you'd usually draw an italicized æ, so how else should it be drawn?

[Jacques DAFFLON (jacques.dafflon)]

You can try and make an æ where you show the "leg" (at the bottom right) of the letter a... but still I think it wouldn't be as clear as using a specific 'a' that looks like the one in the UnDotum Police for example just for the æ.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

The problem is that the italicised a is just like an o with a tail, but
the tail is hidden in the "oe" character in the curve of the e, so
italicised "ae" and "oe" are too similar. We should treat italicised
"ae" specially.

Mark

[Richard Henry Lee (rhlee)]

I think is a bug to do with the font itself rather the the bug submission form, so I'll move it over to Ubuntu Font Family.

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

The italic æ and œ glyphs do look different when you look at them side-by-side, but at first glance, the italic æ could easily be misread as œ. Perhaps you could use the double-story a instead of the single-story a in this case.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

DM: Please try non-cursive 'a' for the left-hand component by default, it should be possible retain the existing glyph as a stylistic alternative glyph so that the existing work does not go to waste.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

This can likely be fixed post opening within the existing bounding box and metrics.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

ubuntu-font-family-sources (0.68+ufl-0ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  * New upstream release 0.68+ufl: (LP: #629622, #633508)
    - Libre font, licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0 (LP: #632411)

  * New upstream release 0.68:
    - All
      + Version numbering agreed (LP: #633176, #629727)
      + The glyph at Unicode x1F5d was changed in all fonts, i.e. change
        of commaaccent in Greek glyph
      + Updated OS/2 table Strikethrough and 'post' table underline
        values to match thickness of underscore.
    - Italic / Bold Italic
      + The feminineordinal in the Italic now follows the design of
        the a, it has been updated and hinted.

  * New upstream release 0.67:
    - All
      + Version number forwarded to 0.67
    - Regular
      + Hinting adjustments for 15 - 18 ppm
      + Greek glyph uni1F5D has accent corrected.
      + Hinting amends for lowercase v, w and y in sizes 30 - 42
      + hdmx table include 120dpi ranges (LP: #608823)
      + Hinting amended to adjust for Freetype hint
        implementation. (LP: #614693)
    - Italic
      + Greek glyph uni1F5D has accent corrected.
    - Italic / Bold Italic:
      + lowercase f redesigned. (LP: #623925)
      + ae dipthong redesigned. (LP: #621157)

 -- Paul Sladen <email address hidden> Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:00:00 +0100