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Possible superior letter name inconstancy?

Open mathieureguer opened this issue 3 years ago • 5 comments

Most superior letters are named with the mod suffix (amod, bmod, cmod, dmod, emod, fmod, gmod, kmod, mmod, omod, pmod, tmod, umod, vmod, zmod) while some are named with the supmod suffix (hsupmod, jsupmod, lsupmod, rsupmod, ssupmod, wsupmod, xsupmod, ysupmod).

I guess this is because the set is split across multiple code pages. Maybe they should all use the same suffix? Something supmod to avoid ambiguity with other potential modifiers? Maybe they should even use a dot syntax (a.supmod)?

I am happy to make a PR for this (or at least try to 😅) if you think it makes sense.

mathieureguer avatar Jun 16 '22 11:06 mathieureguer

Let's see. It looks like these mod names have been like this from the beginning. This line is the conversion of SMALL to sup which may not always be correct? Does "small" have to mean "superior". https://github.com/LettError/glyphNameFormatter/blob/abb3cdb0fc8c3ee7863382d2a8f8b1b5029ac653/Lib/glyphNameFormatter/rangeProcessors/spacing_modifier_letters.py#L23 I don't remember what the motivation was to use sup for small. Maybe small would be better?

LettError avatar Jun 18 '22 12:06 LettError

Suppose we want to make .mod suffixes, we would need a bunch.

  • .supmod or .smallmod
  • .hooksupmod
  • .hookturnedsupmod
  • .turnedsupmod
  • .supinvertedmod etc I find that a bit discouraging.

LettError avatar Jun 18 '22 12:06 LettError

Thanks for looking into this. It is indeed a bit discouraging :) On top of the amount of potential mod related suffixes, they seem have very different semantic values: a.supmod could maybe be an alternate from of a triggered by an OT feature but a.hooksupmod is likely not to be an alternate, I suppose. Like we have A.smcp but no A.acute.

You are right, it is probably better to leave this as it is. Thanks for the input!

mathieureguer avatar Jun 21 '22 13:06 mathieureguer

Might still change sup to small which seems closer to the unicode. Any thoughts about that?

LettError avatar Jun 21 '22 13:06 LettError

Maybe smallmod is better? (I have no qualification to answer this though 😁) It's the sup keyword that lead me to use these unicode values for a.sups b.sups etc. But maybe that was a mistake and these unicode values should remain for phonetic related glyphs only and superiors should remain unicodeless? 🤷‍♂️

mathieureguer avatar Jun 21 '22 17:06 mathieureguer