Summary of Considerations for a Proofing Font

Introduction

This page was created in response to this discussion and to start by summarizing the considerations for a proofing font for Latin-1 using the discussion here when the original DPCustomMono font was created.

Considerations

• Starting with the obvious--monospaced.
• Whitespace--Adding whitespace on either side of characters that tend to blend into other characters to make a third one (e.g. i, r, n). Letter-spacing, kerning.
• Exaggerate distinguishing characteristics--for example make the horizontal bars at the top and bottom of upper case I a little longer and heavier; increase the size and separation of the dot over lower case i, etc.
• Give the space character a non-blank rendering such as a tiny triangle in the text line so that spaces where there shouldn't be any stand out.
• It would be very helpful if we maintained a chart with the Latin-1 character, code value and Name(s) of each one.

Character Specific

Letters

Organized alphabetically. The first character on a line is intended to be the one closest to the beginning of the alphabet.

• a d (tall riser on d)
• a s o Use open form of lowercase a
• a u
• a x
• aw r
• Ordinal a
• AE ligature
• B E K R 3 (Bee, Eee, Kay, Argh, three)
• B ** (sz ligazure [Ringel-s]) Not sure what this is but suspect it's the German letter representing ss and looks like beta. I don't think this is part of Latin-1 || Yes, ß is German sz-ligature & it is a valid part of Latin-1 (code ß)
• b h (One individual made the circle of the b a little thicker and spread the feet of the h to increase the gap)
• C c Make the capital taller (For all letters where the capital and lower case are shaped the same, one suggestion was to add slight serifs to the capitals)
• c e
• c n
• c o
• c r
• cl d
• ç (cedilla) Make the "hook" on the bottom obvious.
• di th[** die vs. the]
• E--see B above
• e--See c above
• F P
• f p
• f r
• f L poundsign (lower case eff, upper el, poundsign)
• fl n
• g s
• h i
• h il
• h li
• h n
• h t
• hi M
• I i l 1 ! (Capital I (eye) with exaggerated line on top and bottom, Lower i (eye), Lower l (el), Number 1 (one), Punctuation exclamation point)
• i--See I above (exaggerated dot)
• i--See h above
• i r
• i ¡ (lower case i, inverted exclamation point)
• ii n
• iii in
• in m
• il n
• im un
• J (front part curvy)
• J j Make the capital taller
• K--See B above
• K k Make the capital taller
• L--See f above
• l--See I above (curvy)
• li th
• li u
• M--see hi
• m in
• m ra
• m rn (em, argh-en)
• m ru
• m vi*
• m w*
• n*--See c above
• n fl*
• n*--See h above
• n il*
• n r*
• n ri* (rounder curve on n, especially the upper right)
• n u*
• O o* Make the capital taller
• O 0* (Capital O (Oh), Number 0 (zero))--Dot preferred to distinguish from (future) Norwegian slashed O.
  There have been requests for something specific (not just the lack of a dot) on the O (oh) to make it stand out when it's in the place of a zero.
  Several people asked for a rounder oh. There was a suggestion for a dotted diamond shape for zero.
• o*--See c above
• Ordinal o
• P p Make the capital taller
• P--See F above
• p--See f above
• R--See B above
• r--See c above
• r--See f above
• r--See i above
• r t
• re w
• rm rn
• S s Make the capital taller
• s--See g above
• s 5 (ess and five)
• t--See h above
• ti u
• u--See a above
• V v Make the capital taller
• v y
• W w Make the capital taller
• wi un
• X x Make the capital taller
• Z z Make the capital taller

Accent Marks

• Exaggerated accent marks (egu[acute?], grave, circumflex, diaeresis/umlaut, macron, tilde)
• Does cedilla belong here instead of in letters?
• Overdot and underdot are frequently used in transliterations.

Numbers

• 1--See I above (slash through vertical line, no horizontal foot, ovious angular tail, down from the top to the left)
• 3--See B above
• 5--See s above
• There was a suggestion to underline all numbers, perhaps excepting the 2, to make them obviously seen as numbers. This wasn't implemented. There were commentors that were not having difficulty distinguishing the numbers from letters (at this point they had DPCustomMono2) and thought the underlining would be annoying or distracting.
• Then there was a suggestion to make the numberals "reverse video" (black rectangle with the glyph in white).
• Another suggestion was to lower the numbers slightly, as many numerals were in older fonts.

Punctuation

• ' (Apostrophe/single quote) Ensure it is BIG enough to see.
• Braces and Parentheses {} ()
• : ; (Distinguish between : (colon) and ; (semi-colon))
• ! (Exclamation Point)--See I above [Big dot under exclamation point]
• ¡ ; (Exclamation Point inverted and semi-colon) (Make the line on the inverted exclamation point taller and/or have it drop below the "line". Curve the comma like portion of the semi-colon)
• Hyphen, n-dash, m-dash (not sure if any but hyphen are included in Latin-1)
• - ~ Hyhen vs tilde
• . , (Distinguish between . (period/full stop) and , (comma))
• » and « Ensure they are easy to tell apart.

Other Printing Characters

• Ordinal o and degree (Also ensure they look different in the character picker)

Non-Printing Characters

• Space (something visual. There was some discussion of a small triangle. Someone thought this might look like a hyphen)

There was a suggestion for a tiny dot.

• Space vs. non-printing space
• Tab (something visual). Possibly automatically replacing with a space (upon saving?).

See Unicode to ASCII mapping for more detail. Tabs and other space-type invisible characters in that list will be replaced with a single space per character. Anything else not defined in the character suites associated with a project will be rejected on project load, and not permitted on page saves. They will be identified, and the proofer will have to remove them. -- srjfoo 01:09, 15 January 2020 (EST)

Unsupported Characters

• Map any character we don't support to a single "blodge" character.

Links & Tools

Link to Wikipedia Latin-1 character set with code values.

It would be very helpful if we maintained a chart with the character, code value and Name(s) of each one.

Thread on Stealth Scannos. Some character information was taken from this thread.