Style: ЩщЦцф Cyrillic glyph shapes not consistent with Latin design

[Dmitry Gribanov]

Rendered in 24pt Regular

Sample Glyphs:

щЩфцЦ

Description:

I like the font ubuntu. But this russian letters do not fit into the font. They need to redraw.

UA String:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/10.10 Chromium/10.0.648.6 Chrome/10.0.648.6 Safari/534.16

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

Automatic Screenshot

[adoa (adoa)]

Thank you for your bug report.
Can you further explain why you think these glyphs do not fit into the font:

Are the glyphs themselves the problem? Should they look (more) consistent with some other glyphs from the Cyrillic alphabet, e.g. Пп, Шш? Is only the regular style affected or the italic as well? Which part of the glyphs is not correct?

Is the font rendering the problem? What settings (System→Preferences→Font→Details) do you use? Have you tried different settings? Does this problem occur in all programs and font sizes or just in some?

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

>Are the glyphs themselves the problem?
Yes, but i'm not a pro. They look square, non-native. Arial - like.

>Should they look (more) consistent with some other glyphs from the Cyrillic alphabet, e.g. Пп, Шш?
i think they should look more consistent by themself.

Is only the regular style affected or the italic as well? Which part of the glyphs is not correct?
Italic is ok.

Is the font rendering the problem?
No.

[adoa (adoa)]

Sorry but I still do not see the problem. I have made a screenshot showing Ubuntu Font, DejaVu Sans, Arial comparing the letters щ and ш.

I know that щащлык is not a real Russian word. But you said the glyphs themselves are the problem. You compared the Ubuntu font shape with Arial, somehow. Can you once again explain the problem using my screenshot? Please be precise. Is the shape of DejaVu Sans better?

PS: I understand Russian, if it is easier for you to explain in Russian.

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

>I understand Russian, if it is easier for you to explain in Russian.
nice ^_^
Я хочу указать на излишнюю квадратность и несогласованность русского начертания, буквы щ, ц - самый яркий пример квадратности. Хвостик буквы уходит вертикально вниз с выступом вверху, что не свойственно этому шрифту. щ,ц плохо выглядят даже рядом с другими вытянутыми по вертикали буквами - щур цру щитень трещотка.
Верхняя часть буквы ф выше чем нижняя, буква не попадает в воображаемую линию строчки.
Вообще английское начертание выглядит более округлым и плавным, за это мне шрифт и нравится. С курсивом такой проблемы нет. Наверное сравнивать напрямую два разных набора символов нельзя, но я считаю что в визуальном выражении русский вариант шрифта должен подражать оригиналу. Я не профессионал и к индустрии шрифтов не имею отношения. Сказанное выше правда для меня, но не обязательно для других.

[adoa (adoa)]

ok, I will try to translate. Please be aware that neither English, nor Russian is my mother tongue.

iTux wrote
“I want to point out the unnecessary angularity and inconsistency of the Russian [better: Cyrillic] shapes, the letters ‘щ’ and ‘ц’ are the best examples of angularity. The angular hook on the bottom right is shifted towards the upstroke, which is absolutely not characteristic for this font. The letters ‘щ’ and ‘ц’ even look bad next to another letter that begins with a vertical stroke or a descender: щур цру щитень трещотка.
The upper part [ascender?] of the letter ‘ф’ is longer than the lower part [descender?], the glyph does not fit into the thought line.
In general the shapes of the English [better: Latin] glyphs are rounder and more flowing, that is exactly why I like the font. The italic shapes do not have this problem.
Maybe a direct comparison of two different sets of symbols [alphabets?] is not possible, but I think the visual impression of the Russian [Cyrillic] version should imitate the original one.
I am not a professional and I have no connections to the typesetting industry.
This is my personal view, not necessarily that of other people.”

I hope this is approximately what you wanted to express.

My Answer to that:
1. The hook does not exist in English (Latin), that is correct. The shape of it is a question of design. Ask the type designers why they decided to make the hook angular and not round. The ‘д’ has the exact same hook on the bottom right.
2. The (almost) collision of different parts of neighbor letters is quite usual in other fonts, too. Again: Ask the type designers why this should not be a problem.
3. The ascender of ф is not higher that that of б.

Please see screen-shot for examples

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

I made very rough mashup to illustrate my point of view.

[adoa (adoa)]

OK, I see your point: You want the Ubuntu font to look as round in Cyrillic as it is in Latin. I hope some font designers from Dalton Maag can say something about the design for the Cyrillic glyphs. Probably the Greek glyphs also have to be taken into account when comparing Cyrillic and Latin.

One obvious point right away: In your mashup the Cyrillic п is not distinguishable from Latin n can be a problem, does not have to be. I know they are not distinguishable in italics anyway.

And I like your rounded л ;-) But I don’t like the hook of the ц: it is far too insignificant. Should be more of a hook, probably like the bottom of Latin l (lowercase L) or Latin t shifted and turned.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Sounds like bug #613277 ("Style: Cyrillic glyphs ДЦЩЪ (дцщъ) could benefit from a bit of rounding") again.

[David Marshall (dave-daltonmaag)]

I'm not a designer, but I can address some of the issues raised.

It's probably worth mentioning at the outset that letterform choices can
be a difficult area. What's right in handwriting is often very wrong in
upright type - in Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, or any other script - but can
be appropriate for an italic.

The roundness you're introducing does copy some of the features from the
Latin letters, but doesn't do it in a script-sensitive way.

For example, making the pe look like an n is superficially sensible, but
the pe is descended from the Greek pi, and is completely unrelated to
the latin n, so it isn't logical.

Yes, there are more hard right-angle corners in Cyrillic than in Latin,
but that's just the nature of the script. Trying to de-Cyrillicize the
letterforms wouldn't be appropriate IMO.

I *think* we can defend all of our Cyrillic letterform choices as being
culturally-sensitive and right for the style of font that Ubuntu is.

Dave

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

I agree with Dave about corners and de-cyrillicize the letterforms, but that does not mean that the font is perfect. Let's discuss the details.

[Dmitry Gribanov (turies)]

Sorry i forgot to add IMHO.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

I don't think we assume that anything is perfect; for instance just this week we're discovering the possibility to correct/improve the Bulgarian Cyrillic cursive forms (see bug #708578 if you're interested).

Thank you to David, adoa and iTux for your replies. Rather than split the discussion, I'd like to dup this against the earlier bug that same issue (opened 5 months ago). This is so that everything gets documented in a single location and is easier to refer to. Now that we're clear that this is an Cyrillic angular style issue, please could we move the discussion back to bug #613277!