Contrastive use of kratka and breve

[Philippe Verdy]

The alternative would be to encode a separate CYRILLIC COMBINING "LUNAR"
BREVE for the case of the initial /j/, or to encode that letter /j/
specifically.

However in your examples, that letter /j/ only occurs in the word initial
position where phonology transforms the long /i/ into /j/. Contextually you
can still make the difference even if the glyphs are not contrasted.

But may be you have examples showing that letter /j/ in a non-initial
position (at start of a syllable, i.e. after a vowel) or at end of words
(also after a vowel) where such contextual guess is not easy to decide
between /j/ and long /i/.

It would be interesting to have details where krafka is expected and where
a breve is expected, and where they can be confusing. If you cannot find
such example then a simple rendering rule would be to use the lunar form of
the breve in syllable start position (over и at start of a word, or
over и after
another vowel), and the krafka form (with both arms terminated by a rounded
bowl) in all other positions (over и in the middle of a syllable after a
consonnant... or also over и at end of word unles you also need the
distinction there between a final long /i/ and a final /j/?),



2014-07-02 19:34 GMT+02:00 Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr>:

> ZWNJ is not supposed to join or disjoin combing diacritics from a base
> letter (even if it has such limited use in Indic scripts, but only between
> letters to prevent clusters with subjoined letters),
>
> CGJ would be better used to prevent canonical compositions but it won't
> normally give a distinctive semantic.
>
> It looks like you have a case where you would need to encode a variant of
> the base letter и (with a variant selector). The rendering may be still
> fuzzy as there's no such variant registered for that CYRILIC LETTER I.
>
> Probably, given that you have fonts making a specific contrast for и +
> U+306, adding a CGJ in the middle would do the trick if it is only to
> prevent the canonically equivalent composition which could occur in many
> places.
>
>
>
> 2014-07-02 18:11 GMT+02:00 Leo Broukhis <leob at mailcom.com>:
>
>> Here
>>
>> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Contrastive_use_of_kratka_and_breve.JPG
>> is an example of й and и + U+0306 COMBINING BREVE used contrastively (/j/
>> vs short /i/) thanks to a difference in typographic style of Cyrillic breve
>> (kratka) and regular breve.
>> For me in Win7 using и + U+0306 results in a contrast, but given that и +
>> U+0306 is a canonical decomposition of й and a renderer is allowed, if not
>> encouraged, to use the glyph for й every time it sees и + U+0306, what is
>> the right (portable) way to do that? Would и + ZWNJ + U+0306 work? Should
>> it?
>>
>> I'd like to reply to
>> https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82:%D0%92%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%AE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B4#.D0.9E_.D0.BA.D1.80.D0.B0.D1.82.D0.BA.D0.B5_.D0.B8_.D0.B1.D1.80.D0.B5.D0.B2.D0.B8.D1.81.D0.B5
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Leo
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
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