Using dotted circle (U+25CC) as a placeholder for diacritics

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makipe
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Using dotted circle (U+25CC) as a placeholder for diacritics

Post by makipe »

As far as I know it’s a common practice to use dotted circle to represent the base character when demonstrating various diacritical marks. I’m trying to do that in Syriac script but with no success. Mellel does not combine dotted circle with vowel marks, the characters just follow one another. The font is East Syriac Ctesiphon. It seems it doesn’t work in Latin script either when trying to demonstrate accents. Is there any way to get it done?
jannuss
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Re: Using dotted circle (U+25CC) as a placeholder for diacri

Post by jannuss »

makipe wrote:As far as I know it’s a common practice to use dotted circle to represent the base character when demonstrating various diacritical marks. I’m trying to do that in Syriac script but with no success. Mellel does not combine dotted circle with vowel marks, the characters just follow one another. The font is East Syriac Ctesiphon. It seems it doesn’t work in Latin script either when trying to demonstrate accents. Is there any way to get it done?
Makipe, I think the problem is not with the dotted circle symbol [25CC], but with the diacritic marks themselves.

I tried using the dotted circle with regular Latin marks [alt-e, for example] and they behaved as you describe: the characters follow one another.

Then, I put my keyboard in Hebrew mode and entered the dotted circle followed by a Hebrew vowel [alt-4, HIREQ] and the results were correct: the vowel appeared under the circle. I even managed two vowels, DAGASH in the center and HIREQ below.

So, I think your issue is not with Mellel, but with the Syriac font and/or the keyboard you are using.

Janet
makipe
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Re: Using dotted circle (U+25CC) as a placeholder for diacri

Post by makipe »

It seems that Apple’s TextEdit can do this correctly, so I think the problem is not in the font. If I try to copy-paste the text from TextEdit to Mellel, things go wrong and if I copy-paste this wrongly rendered text from Mellel to TextEdit, it gets right.
jannuss
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Location: Israel

Re: Using dotted circle (U+25CC) as a placeholder for diacri

Post by jannuss »

makipe wrote:It seems that Apple’s TextEdit can do this correctly, so I think the problem is not in the font. If I try to copy-paste the text from TextEdit to Mellel, things go wrong and if I copy-paste this wrongly rendered text from Mellel to TextEdit, it gets right.
Yes, Mellel does not use the Apple text engine, but one of its own.

My experience with Hebrew diacritics is that it is always better to have a font that handles things correctly and does not rely on the rendering engine to do them.

Even though you see the results correctly with TextEdit, there is no guarantee that colleagues will see them as you wish on their computers. Also, have you checked what happens when you export the text to WORD or a pdf file?

Janet
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