Cyrillic: Macedonian Cyrillic Italics: гѓ should look like reverse-latin s with bar (and acute)

[Paul Sladen]

The cursive lowercase g and j used in Cyrillic Macedonian (гѓ) are rendering incorrectly in italic form. One looks like a latin 'ī' i-with-bar and the other is missing the bar, which should appear between the main glyph and the acute.

(Many thanks to Damjan Georgievski from Macedonia, who I missed at Debconf, but have been in contact with since).

The attached PDF in comment #1 shows some glyphs in red (incorrect, needs changing) and some in green (correct).

Proposed solution:
  1. Lang=mk cursive 'г' be changed to base reverse-s currently in cursive 'ѓ'
  2. Accent replaced with bar above to match italic пт
  3. Lang=mk cursive 'ѓ' be changed to match new 'г'
  4. Accent added in addition to bar
  5. Test (using 'pango-view' code in comment #1)
  6. Post proposed solution to Canonical Design Blog

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Generated with:

  $ pango-view --output mk-cyrillic-cursive-g-j.pdf --language mk --font '50' --markup --text '<span font="Ubuntu">бдгѓптзк<span color="#900">љњ</span>ѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#900">гѓ</span>птзк<span color="#900">љњ</span>ѐѝ</i> <span color="#eee"></span></span>
<span font="DejaVu Serif">бдгѓптзкљњѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#060">гѓ</span>птзк<span color="#060">љњ</span>ѐѝ</i></span>
<span font="DejaVu Sans">бдгѓптзк<span color="#060">љњ</span>ѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#990">гѓ</span>птзкљњѐѝ</i></span> '

[Damjan Georgievski (gdamjan)]

Hi Paul,
I would say that the exact shape of the г and ѓ depends on the font and the artist, so it can be a more curvy or the more straight-up form. The important thing is that in the Macedonian cyrillic alphabet, they should look the same, and they both need to have the bar. Practically ѓ is always the same with г but with the acute added above the bar.

For reference, there's an image on the wikipedia page about the Macedonian cyrillic alphabet,
http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Македонско_ракописно_писмо - it's highly stylized hand-written form, but could be considered the "official" look (that's what we get taught in school).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Thanks for that Damjan; looking on there I can see why it might have been mistaking for being close to a Latin lowercase 'i'. Do you have any other examples (who you be able to scan any examples written in your own handwriting?).

More linkable (but less readable) version of that link that image and the page it's on:

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mk/1/15/Makedonsko_rakopisno_pismo.png
  http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%BE

[Damjan Georgievski (gdamjan)]

Can I check/get this version from somewhere?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

gdamjan: the current version 0.80 is in Ubuntu and available for down from:

  http://font.ubuntu.com/

The proposed solution has not been undertaken yet.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

PDF showing proposed design of "г ѓ" kursive for Russian/Serbian/Macedonian.

Are the glyphs correct? Are the bars in the correct position? Is the shape acceptable? Is the kursive localisation selection for ru/rs/mk correct?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

PDF showing proposed design of "г ѓ" kursive for Russian/Serbian/Macedonian.

Are the glyphs correct? Are the bars in the correct position? Is the shape acceptable? Is the kursive localisation selection for ru/rs/mk correct?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Had a long (and inconclusive) discussion on #ubuntu-rs about the above. Thank you to those who took part:

  http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/12/06/%23ubuntu-rs.html#t22:34

and particularly those looking into getting some firmer academic clarification.

[Далибор Ђурић (dalibor)]

I done some research on forum specialized in serbian linguistics.
According to this thread http://www.vokabular.org/forum/index.php?topic=1177.0 serbian lowercas ge (г) in cursive should look like this: ƨ̄, ī is stylized variation.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Serbian_Cyrillic_cursive2.png is good example of serbian handwriting except г should be curved. (Man who drew this picture himself said ƨ̄ is correct form. He is wikipedia contributor and serbian linguist)

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

  1. Russian kursive: 'г' is probably correct ('ƨ' agreed no bar)
  2. Macedonian kursive: 'гѓ' is probably correct ('ƨ̄ƨ̄́' agreed yes bar)
  3. Serbian kursive: 'г' people don't agree on ('ƨ' vs. 'ƨ̄'; possibly one is older and one is newer)
  4. All Cyrillic kursive: unsure whether it's an 'ι' or 'ƨ'; and can't agree In hand-writing it seems to be something that is halfway between (neither of them exactly); but again, not clear cut.
  5. The way that Default + Overrides works. I've had several answers about "ѓ isn't in Russian and Serbian". The characters are always present in the font (otherwise people wouldn't be able to write lonewords/ or text from another language without chaning your font!). It's just a question of what to do when there is *extra* lang= information available at the language of that piece of text.

[adoa (adoa)]

I can confirm that the Russian glyphs are correct, both for regular and italic.
But the г does not have an accent in modern Russian. You might need the accent to write other languages, as Paul already stated.

[Далибор Ђурић (dalibor)]

Г could not have accent in any Slavic language, in Macedonian accute is aded to г and that letter is counterpart to Serbian ђ.
It sems ge with bar is registered in Unicode as Serbian/Macedonian form. http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

@Далибор: the handwriting example you give on http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Serbian_Cyrillic_cursive2.png is the correct form, and no, it should not be "curved". The "reverse s" form (with the bar) derives from Russian "g", and is not traditionally Serbian.

Also, the thread you mention on vokabular is not very definite. The person with the above hand-writing claims how his handwriting is incorrect and that the Russian form should be used instead (with the bar on top). Nobody else claims any authority in that thread, so it should not be trusted. I believe current form of the lowercase "g" should be kept for Serbian Italic variants.

His hand-writing is the *correct* form. In sans-serif italic fonts, it is customary to drop the "connecting" line on the left (the "/" part), and thus we end up with the form as in Ubuntu fonts today. Please do not ask for this to be broken so it agrees with someone's confused statements.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Btw, that link you provide for ghe-with-bar also supports the fact that ghe is not curved: http://jankojs.tripod.com/tiro_serbian.jpg

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

@Paul: Comments like "character not used in Serbian" mean that those reading Serbian would not care much whatever style it takes. If some Macedonian text appears in an otherwise Serbian-tagged text, it would sure make more sense to use the same base glyph as in Serbian, simply from the legibility standpoint.

Just like most Serbians would probably prefer to read Russian Cyrillic using Serbian Cyrillic style (i.e. this is a property of someone's locale and not of the text). I don't have data to back this statement up, though. Also, those Serbians who actually know Russian would be more likely to disagree.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Attached image should further illustrate why is current "ghe" right for Serbian. If anything, it is missing the bottom right "continuation" stem. Basically, in the current form, it has the left-side continuation stem removed, just like eg. lowercase "п", so that's fine. The fact that it's missing the right-hand side stem might be what's causing the confusion.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

The alternative Serbian г with the same bottom-right stem end like lowercase п: this would perhaps be an improvement, but I don't feel strongly about it.