[DejaVu-fonts] when to use references

[Nocturnal D. <noc...@gm...>]

Hi,

I looked at the fonts again and noticed that in sans only references are
used, so A, Alpha and Cyrillic A have the same gylph. However in Serif
there are copied (=identical!) outlines.

References make sense with sans and mono since the glyphs are not
supposed to differ that much. In serif fonts one would like to be able
to differentiate between an A and an alpha, so typefaces like Gentium
have slightly different glyphes for them (in contrast to DejaVu Serif).

Since I am no expert it would be nice to hear other opinions.

Greetings,
Nocturnal Dreamer

Ben Laenen wrote:

>>for glyphs like capital alpha beta or epsilon you could have used
>>references to A, B, E etc. as done in sans, instead of copying the
>>outlines. 
>>    
>>
>
>Funny, the first patch I sent to DejaVu some months ago had the opposite 
>remark (the Greek glyphs in Sans), and that's why I never used references in 
>Serif, except for referencing e.g. Iotadieresis to Iota and dieresis of 
>course).
>
>Maybe this is a good time to start a discussion: when using references and 
>when not?
>
>When creating the glyphs for Sans I always referenced to a glyph that looked 
>the same. When creating Serif glyphs I thought more about it:
>
>Referencing "kappa" in Greek to "ke" in Cyrillic: Should this be a reference 
>when both glyphs have the same appearance? I understand that is isn't the 
>same letter, but it has the same origin and pronounciation, and in fonts like 
>Sans it looks exactly the same.
>
>Referencing "Eta" in Greek to "H": it isn't the same letter, but it has the 
>same appearance, should there be a reference?
>
>Referencing "Alpha" to "A": it is pronounced the same way, "A" comes form 
>"Alpha" but is it the same letter? The first one is Greek, the second is 
>Latin, so in a way this is the same discussion as "kappa" and "ke".
>
>So then I looked at the Unicode Code Charts and looked at the references it 
>mentions, and it never references a Greek letter to a Latin one, so I 
>followed the Code Charts and copied the glyph instead of referencing them 
>when I created Serif.
>
>Off course, referencing them has the effect of reducing the font size and if 
>the reference is hinted, it is automatically hinted as well, but if the other 
>letters of the same alphabet aren't hinted it gives a strange look of two 
>different fonts (try using Sans Bold on Greek texts for example).
>
>So what do other people think of this?
>
>Greetings,
>Ben
>
>  
>