ḃ & ḋ: dot above should be centred over bowl

[Moilleadoir]

Irish now uses an added ‘h’ to mark lenition, but historically it used a dot above the letter and this is still sometimes used. This dot was always centred over the bowl of bcdp (ḃċḋṗ) but Source Serif centres it over the stem of b and d. This looks very odd when setting Irish text.

Source Code also centres these over the stem, but Source Sans centres over the bowl.

As far as I can tell these two letters (ḃ & ḋ) are only used in Irish and ISO 259 Romanization of Hebrew (1984), which has been superseded by ISO 259-2 & 259-3 which don’t use dotted b & d.

Below are some examples of some Gaelic & non-Gaelic fonts. Could this be changed?

[frankrolf]

Thanks for the note. This can of course be changed, I just wish it would have been pointed out before I made a new release just yesterday 🤣

Well, I guess that's just how it is. I will work on this in the next round of fixes, but it might take a while.

[Moilleadoir]

Thanks!

[moyogo]

@frankrolf Just to be clear @Moilleadoir is requesting the dot above should be centered over bowl but also lower, like it is in Source Sans or the other example shown.

Just as a personal comment: the Gaelic script clearly requires the dot to be below ascender height, closer to the bowl, but, in the other styles, this is arguably just one of the possible positions of the dot above on letters like b, d, h, k. One may prefer the height of the dot to match the one on the f for example, or one may prefer it to match that of the c.

[Moilleadoir]

In Gaelic script the only (dotted) character that really has an ascender is b. In general I think aiming for a uniformity of height of the dot, where possible, is the way to go.

I agree in principle that it’s a stylistic choice for non Gaelic script fonts (and there are certainly fonts that make other choices), but in reality I’m not sure if there is a context for the other choice. I think it would need input from people who actually use the diacritic, rather than just catering to a theoretical preference. Perhaps there are other users who would expect the dot to be over the stem. I honestly don’t know, but I do know that in Irish it seems harder to read.

Changing the (default) position to above the bowl may (on the surface) introduce an irregularity when compared with ḣh & k̇k, but if there is no language or context where they coincide then it shouldn’t a problem.

[frankrolf]

I understood the original request, but appreciate the additional expertise. Thanks, @moyogo @Moilleadoir ! :-)

[frankrolf]

FWIW (and I did not even think about this, @erniemarch pointed it out): Source Serif does not even contain pre-composed glyphs for this combination, so I assume you’re typing b + U+0307, or d + U+0307, respectively?

I am reluctant to move the mark attachment anchor below the ascender because that will limit what other marks can do, but I see that these code points exist:

• U+1E03 LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH DOT ABOVE
• U+1E0B LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH DOT ABOVE

Possibly the addition of these code points would solve the problem? These two code points are part of Adobe Latin 5, so I’ll add the label to this issue.