rsms
Interlingual ambiguation (Latin-Cyrillic)
Some Cyrillic glyphs look identical to other Latin glyphs, so they're completely indistinguishable. It makes difficult to detect characters in a bilingual text, as well as to see typos made by using the same-looking characters from the wrong language (sometimes it creates problems when searching the words, etc.)
These symbols should be changed somehow in order they have different shapes.
The list of these ones: A (U+0041) and А (U+0410), a (U+0061) and а (U+0430), B (U+0042) and В (U+0412), C (U+0043) and С (U+0421), c (U+0063) and с (U+0441), E (U+0045) and Е (U+0415), e (U+0065) and е (U+0435), H (U+0048) and Н (U+041D), K (U+004B) and К (U+041A), k (U+006B) and к (U+043A) [already differs - it needs to keep the difference!], M (U+004D) and М (U+041C), O (U+004F) and О (U+041E), o (U+006F) and о (U+043E), P (U+0050) and Р (U+0420), p (U+0070) and р (U+0440), T (U+0054) and Т (U+0422), X (U+0058) and Х (U+0425), x (U+0078) and х (U+0445), y (U+0079) and у (U+0443).
This is designed as an interface font. And to be basically invisible (as good UI fonts are). So generally there are not going to be any cute quirks to differentiate Latin vs. Cyrillic Do you have an example of a UI font which does this?
Below is a comparison of Inter, Segoe UI (Windows), and SF Pro (macOS) for the character list you supplied. The serif font is Source Serif 4. Appears that neither Microsoft or Apple do this.
Inter is disigned to look nice on a display, i.e. for any text which is seen on monitor, e.g. the text in a text editor, the code in an IDE, etc., not only as "interface font". And if one of it's main features is "disambiguation", why is doesn't work between languages? Most of people are able to read the word "Illegal" even if capital i and small L looks the same, and case-insensitive search is able to find this word flawlessly, too. But looking for the misspelled variable in code might be the real pain, when latin A and cyrillic A nave no visual difference! So, disambiguation should not be limited by one block of glyphs and spread on the whole font.
And the fact that nobody made such font until now is not a rule to follow by, but a big problem that is to be solved! Of course I can make such font by myself for personal use, but wish that other people also have ability to make their lifes a bit better. I have no exemple yet, but here's the idea how it should look (latin characters are on the left and cyrillic on the right):
As you can see, paired letters are quite different and can be easily distinguished in any size. Of course, people who use a single language might not be interested in it, but those who use two or more should be thankful.
ps: a long time ago I've had pocket PC with embedded font which had such feature, and it was very comfortable ;)
I found some, but they're too weird for daily use:
https://online-fonts.com/fonts/tippytoes-bold https://online-fonts.com/fonts/logopixies https://online-fonts.com/fonts/ganesha-type https://online-fonts.com/fonts/pecita-cyrillic
Three handwriting fonts (which of course have variation by design), and a quirky display font. I meant a similar style font - sans serif text fonts.
On Google Fonts I filtered the fonts by Cyrillic, and Sans Serif, and added this sample text:
AАaаBВCСcсEЕeеHНKКkкMМOОoоPРpрTТXХxхyу
https://fonts.google.com/?preview.text=A%D0%90a%D0%B0B%D0%92C%D0%A1c%D1%81E%D0%95e%D0%B5H%D0%9DK%D0%9Ak%D0%BAM%D0%9CO%D0%9Eo%D0%BEP%D0%A0p%D1%80T%D0%A2X%D0%A5x%D1%85y%D1%83&preview.size=32&script=Cyrl&categoryFilters=Sans+Serif:%2FSans%2F*
In 120 font families, there was some variation in the KКkк and that's about it.
I would think that if this was a major issue somebody would have addressed it.
Have never heard of this before so I was curious, but does not appear to be a thing.
Thus, I doubt the Inter developer would want to put in the many hours needed to do this. (I would be very surprised)
Perhaps you should do as you mentioned above - make a version for yourself. Just an RIBBI version would be enough to demo the technique. Make it available here on GitHub, and see if anyone else is interested. Maybe it will catch on.
I am kinda curious as to what the actual font was in your old "pocket PC".
I really don’t see the point in this. Even if somebody uses multiple languages, there really wouldn’t be a problem. Designing different glyphs for homographs is like making Latin letters look different based on whether it’s in English or Italian. If Spanish speakers can tell when a word is in English or Spanish despite them both using the same alphabet, I would highly doubt any need to alter the Cyrillic script. It would arguably be less easy to read if they were altered like that.
