MONGOLIAN LETTER YA medial second form, incorrect image?

Tue Nov 18 12:12:02 CST 2014

thanks for this, Andrew.

I'm not quite sure how to read your handwritten notes, but if you 
consider the drawing to the far right to be the expected outcome for 
your corrected naming, then you appear to agree with what I was 
suggesting (ie. that ya+fvs1 should have no upturn), *if* i read them 
correctly at the far right. That would be different from what you have 
in the current draft specification, though.

First, here is the text of the bug report I sent to Unicode:

===============================
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/StandardizedVariants.html 
(Standardized Variants) shows a glyph for MONGOLIAN LETTER YA in the 
second medial form with an upturn to the left. I believe this image 
should show a straight downward line.

Reasons:

1. the first initial form has an upturn, and the second initial form is 
straight

2. Professor  Quejingzhabu's chart at 
http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Mongolian/MGWBM/MGWBM_C034-C035.jpg shows 
the upturn for the first medial form and the straight line for the 
second medial form.

3. the Mongolian Baiti, Mongolian White, Mongolian Writing, and Noto 
Sans Mongolian fonts all produce the upturn for the standard medial form 
and the straight line when followed by FVS#1 (To test these fonts you 
can go to http://rishida.net/scripts/block/mongolian.html#char1836 and 
change the font by opening the blue control at the bottom right of the 
window. See the top table in that section.)
===============================

The Mongolian White and Mongolian Writing fonts were developed by people 
trying to make Unicode stick for traditional Mongolian text, and they 
seem pretty good, on the whole, though not perfect.  You can download 
them for free from http://www.mongolfont.com/en/font/index.html

(I would have added them as webfonts to the page i'm about to mention, 
but I couldn't find the licence information to ascertain whether that's 
allowed.)

For font comparisons, the following page may help:
http://rishida.net/scripts/block/mongolian#char1836

Near the top of the section you have a table for what I understand to be 
the currently specified shapes (as images) and the shape for whatever 
font you currently have loaded to view mongolian text.

You can change the font by clicking on the vertical blue bar at the 
bottom right of the window and selecting the font you want from the 
selection offered there. 'Form tables' means the table at the top of the 
YA entry.

Below the top table for the YA entry is a table of syllables, for which 
you can also change the font in the same way (use the 'Mongolian text' 
control).  This allows you to see the shape in combination with any 
(Mongolian) vowel.

Note that per this table i noted that "The initial form and the 
equivalent medial form (ie. no upturn to the left) are used by the 
Mongolian Baiti font (but not Mongolian White or Noto Sans Mongolian) 
when followed by the i vowel."  ie. there seems to be some 
vowel-dependent shaping in the Baiti font that's not in the others. That 
may be a factor in this.

You'll see that, at the bottom of the YA entry, I include "Font 
rendering notes" about font divergences.  In fact you'll find similar 
notes for all the characters where I noticed a difference in behaviour. 
  This should save you some time for comparing actual implementations.

(I think it may help if i allow for any font to be used, rather than 
just provide a selection in the pull-down. I may be able to implement 
that change to the page this weekend, if it helps.)

I still have some detailed notes from Andrew West to read through, but 
for now, I think that that is all I can offer in the way of information. 
I hope it's helpful.

cheers,
ri

On 14/11/2014 18:44, Andrew Glass (WINDOWS) wrote:
> Dear Richard and Andrew,
>
> Microsoft has been working with Michel Suignard to update and correct
> the Mongolian specification. Here is the response to this issue from our
> Mongolian expert:
>
> 1.)           In the early days of development people took Professor
> Que’s instructions to heart and implemented them exactly – even if there
> were errors in the “documentation”.
>
> 2.)           There is such an error in the spec for U+1836 – see
> attached (img375.jpg). The handwriting is my own from some 6-7 years
> back. I made the correction (on the attached img375.jpg) as the name did
> not match the far-right column specification of the ZWJ-FVS sequence. I
> take the ZWJ sequence to be more correct. BUT, this is not the way that
> BAITI is implemented.
>
> 3.)           And that is why I write the current Unicode 8.0 DRAFT
> Mongolian Specification as attached (see img376.jpg)
>
> Given a specification that was inconsistent from the beginning AND given
> that some years of development have gone on since the inconsistent spec
> was “given out” AND therefore there should probably be variant
> implementations “out there”, what do we say is the correct
> specification? We cannot go back to the specifier (Professor Que) as he
> is not a font man. My thought is that the best thing to do is take a
> look at the fonts out on the market, do an analysis and comparison and
> make a decision from there. If indeed there are similar implementation
> in the use of the variant selector at the medial position of 1836, even
> if it does go against what the specification “said” in the beginning,
> and that becomes the de facto standard for the 1836 medial variation
> selector.
>
> Can we get a copy of the fonts that Richard references – Mongolian White
> and Mongolian Writing for comparison?
>
> The NOTO Sans Mongolian seems to be doing the right thing:
>
> But I expect it is too early for this font to be widely used.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Andrew G
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Andrew West
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2014 2:30 AM
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: UnicoDe List
> Subject: Re: MONGOLIAN LETTER YA medial second form, incorrect image?
>
> On 13 November 2014 10:00, Richard Ishida <ishida at w3.org
> <mailto:ishida at w3.org>> wrote:
>
>  > Before reporting this I want to check I have understood it correctly.
>
>  > If you know something about Mongolian variant selectors, please let me
>
>  > know if my conclusion is correct.
>
>  >
>
>  > I think the image for medial MONGOLIAN LETTER YA second form, 1836
>
>  > 180B, at
>
>  > http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/StandardizedVariants.html is
> incorrect.
>
>  >
>
>  > I think it should have no upturn on the left.
>
> Yes, you are correct.  It makes no sense to have an upturn as that would
> be the same glyph as the first medial form.  You can see that the second
> initial form and the second medial form both have the same glyph with no
> upturn (ignore the dot, that is a printing artefact) in Prof.
> Choijinzhab's "Mongolian Encoding":
>
> http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Mongolian/MGWBM/MGWBM_C034-C035.jpg
>
> Andrew
>
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