[1 mod] Style: Greek: document rationale for design of PERISPOMENI accent (tilde vs. inverted breve)

[Simos Xenitellis ]

Rendered in 24pt Regular

Sample Glyphs:

ᾶ

Description:

(I capitalise PERISPOMENI, as it is a convention in Unicode. I am not shouting :-).
(I mentioned the following issue to Bruno already at http://design.canonical.com/2010/09/it%E2%80%99s-all-about-greek/comment-page-1/#comment-3515
so I am just creating the report for completeness).

From the Greek Extended Unicode block - http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F00.pdf
letters that have PERISPOMENI (tilde character over the main letter) are shown to have an inverted breve (upside down cup).

The inverted breve is found in some fonts, however it is not common at all in Greece and Greek.

The sample font at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F00.pdf shows correctly PERISPOMENI (tilde)
All Greek fonts such as those from the Greek Font Society (http://greekfontsociety.gr/) use tilde for PERISPOMENI.

You can try out the GFS fonts in Ubuntu with

sudo apt-get install ttf-gfs-artemisia ttf-gfs-baskerville ttf-gfs-bodoni-classic ttf-gfs-complutum ttf-gfs-didot ttf-gfs-didot-classic ttf-gfs-gazis ttf-gfs-neohellenic ttf-gfs-olga ttf-gfs-porson ttf-gfs-solomos ttf-gfs-theokritos

See also screenshots at http://simos.info/blog/archives/1144
(they compare between DejaVu Sans and Ubuntu Font Beta).

UA String:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100716 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.7

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

While hunting around for the background on this, I found:

  http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2004-June/030424.html

which gives a reasonable overview; in short, yes, there are two variants of drawing the perispomeni accent; either as a variable tilde, or as a invert breve. The determining glyph is '῀' (U+1FCO) which is used as a component for the rest.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Better discussion:

  http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/gkdiacritics.html#circ

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Great sleuthing, Paul :-)

[sterios prosiniklis (steriosprosiniklis)]

Indeed there are more than one styles in the representation of PERISPOMENH for Greek Polytonic. Which shall we choose?

Greek students are taught Ancient Greek (in Greek Polytonic) in high school and senior high school (ages 12 to 18). The school books for high school are freely available as PDF files from http://pi-schools.sch.gr/gymnasio/ (search for «Αρχαία» to find all
relevant books) For example, http://pi-schools.sch.gr/gymnasio/arxaia_b/math/math_1-20.pdf (ages 13-14). You can also download the entire dictionary, students currently use: http://files.ubuntu-gr.org/forum/pros/dictionaries/%20%ce%b1%cf%81%cf%87%ce%b1%ce%af%cf%89%ce%bd%20%ce%b5%ce%bb%ce%bb%ce%b7%ce%bd%ce%b9%ce%ba%cf%8e%ce%bd.pdf

All Greek students go through high school, as it is part of the compulsory education, and they end up seeing this type of Greek Polytonic.

In addition, the default installation of Ubuntu with the Greek locale (language support) allows users to type Greek Polytonic (we made it part of the default keyboard layout). Thus, students can write their school essays on Ubuntu with Ubuntu font, in Greek Polytonic.

Therefore, we, as Ubuntu-gr community, believe that we should go for the style 'tilde' for PERISPOMENI, since it is used in Greek education, and specifically during all (compulsory) secondary education.

A screen shot of the aforementioned dictionary http://ubuntuone.com/p/yPp/

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Unfortunately, since sterios's comment, both <http://ubuntuone.com/p/yPp/> (thanks to the Ubuntu One shutdown) and <http://pi-schools.sch.gr/gymnasio/arxaia_b/math/math_1-20.pdf> have disappeared. And <http://pi-schools.sch.gr/gymnasio/> now redirects to <http://www.pi-schools.gr/>, which doesn't have a search field. However, I confirmed that in <http://files.ubuntu-gr.org/forum/pros/dictionaries/%20%ce%b1%cf%81%cf%87%ce%b1%ce%af%cf%89%ce%bd%20%ce%b5%ce%bb%ce%bb%ce%b7%ce%bd%ce%b9%ce%ba%cf%8e%ce%bd.pdf>, "ᾶ" is rendered using the tilde form.

As <http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/gkdiacritics.html#circ> helpfully lists, both the tilde style and the inverted breve style are widely used. The inverted breve style might be less common, but many design choices in the Ubuntu font are relatively uncommon.

[Kevin Godby (godbyk)]

If someone were to create the glyphs, one possibility would be to provide a stylistic set that allows the author to choose her preferred perispomeni (assuming the software exposes that OpenType feature).

[Simos Xenitellis  (simosx)]

The URL for "pi-schools" has changed to
http://www.pi-schools.gr/books/gymnasio/arxaia_b/math/math_1-20.pdf
(that is, it changed from www.pi-schools.sch.gr into the simplified
www.pi-schools.gr
That department is part of the Ministry of Education, and
http://www.pi-schools.gr/books/gymnasio/ contains all school books in the
PDF format).

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Kevin Godby <email address hidden> wrote:

> If someone were to create the glyphs, one possibility would be to
> provide a stylistic set that allows the author to choose her preferred
> perispomeni (assuming the software exposes that OpenType feature).
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/646069
>
> Title:
> [1 mod] Style: Greek: document rationale for design of PERISPOMENI
> accent (tilde vs. inverted breve)
>
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[stavros daliakopoulos (stavrosd)]

Some samples of Greek perispomeni

http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/greek-fonts.asp

[xoristzatziki (simsonbike-bugs)]

IMHO the usage of tilde is much more descriptive. In our electronic era, inverted breve can be sometimes confused as opposite to "VRACHY" sign.