[Spellyans] Front unrounded vowels, was: The quantity system

[Michael Everson]

At 11:26 +0000 2008-06-25, Jon Mills wrote:
>Michael,
>Why can't Macs read and write diacritics (other than diaresis) above <y>?

Because Mac Roman, which is implemented in tens of thousands of fonts 
which we cannot change, only contains y-diaeresis.

Similarly, the Windows 1252 code page, also implemented in tens of 
thousands of fonts which we cannot change, only contains y-diaeresis 
and y-acute.

>I would have thought in this day of Unicode fonts .... If what you 
>say is true, then it seems to me a good reason for using a PC.

It's not a few large Unicode fonts I am worried about. We have 
inherited twenty years of legacy fonts which simply do not have 
y-grave and y-circumflex. I don't want to see KS orthography attacked 
because we choose letters which will be MISSING from fonts. I don't 
want to see users who are OK with diacritics put off of KS 
orthography because we chose letters which are not in their favourite 
fonts.

The only safe letter is y-diaeresis. There is no better choice. The 
other choices are worse.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com