Dear colleagues,

To chime into that debate:

The visual analysis whereby the two glyphs of the ligatures “æ” and “œ” are confusable across a significant number of fonts is language independent, since irrespective of the language of the user or the resources available at an IDN, the rendering of the url may make use of such fonts. The significant number seems independent of the assumed spread of use of single fonts, which we would have to establish in any case (and I doubt we could do that).

Meanwhile any analysis whereby the ligatures are interchangeable with the sequences the same consist of is language dependent. Since we had many similar discussions in ArabGP, let me remind the GP that we are building a ruleset for the root zone, which applies to the entire script-using community, since IDNs do not have a language property. Accordingly, we should not apply language specific rules across languages (unless code-points are restricted in use to few or single language communities, such as German ß - which is clearly not the case with a, o, and e) and therefore it seems irrelevant if e.g. French users consider the consider the ligature “œ” as equivalent to the sequence o+e or English users consider the ligature  “æ” as equivalent to the sequence a+e, unless we can demonstrate the use across a significant part of the script using community, that is across languages.

Hopefully this helps to settle this debate from a methodological point of view.

Best,

Meikal
Am 12. Feb. 2019, 14:45 +0100 schrieb Tan Tanaka, Dennis via Latingp <latingp@icann.org>:

On the contrary. Let me explain:

 

  1. Our “visual” methodology consists in a 4-point scale that assigns a value to the visual similarity of a pair. Each pair of characters is rendered in three different font types. We agreed on Arial, Times and Courier to do such comparison. Each pair is then score independently (e.g. 1 = Identical; 2 = Nearly identical; 3 = Distinguishable; 4 = Different).
  2. Our “non-visual” methodology is looking for to prove or disprove the notion that certain handwriting customs are transferred to font design. For this analysis we picked the website wordmark.it to analyze a large number of font types.

 

The argument about visual similarity of the ligatures “æ” and “œ” is logically under the “visual” methodology. So, if anything, I’m advocating for us to stick with our methodology and not to apply ad-hoc criteria on a case by case basis.

 

Dennis

 

From: Bill Jouris <bill.jouris@insidethestack.com>
Reply-To: Bill Jouris <bill.jouris@insidethestack.com>
Date: Monday, February 11, 2019 at 4:09 PM
To: Dennis Tan Tanaka <dtantanaka@verisign.com>, "latingp@icann.org" <latingp@icann.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [Latingp] AE, OE, and Ligatures

 

And yet, in our previous work, we considered high visual similarity in a significant number of fonts in workmark to be sufficient cause to consider something a variant. 



So are you arguing for changing our criteria? 

 

Bill Jouris
Inside Products
bill.jouris@insidethestack.com
831-659-8360
925-855-9512 (direct)

 

From: "Tan Tanaka, Dennis via Latingp" <latingp@icann.org>
To: "Michael.Bauland@knipp.de" <Michael.Bauland@knipp.de>; "latingp@icann.org" <latingp@icann.org>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Latingp] AE, OE, and Ligatures

 

Looking again at the visual evidence, I believe this is not a strong case for variants. But it may be a candidate for visual similarity.

 

From a visual standpoint I don’t see it as a clear-cut case. Doing a comparison of the code points "æ" "œ" using wordmark.it, the great majority of fonts show them very distinguishable (e.g. Arial: æ œ, Times: æ œ, Courier: æ œ, Calibri: æ œ).

 

From an orthography viewpoint, I don’t see good support, but of course, this is only one data point.

 

-Dennis

 

On 2/11/19, 9:16 AM, "Latingp on behalf of Michael Bauland" <latingp-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Michael.Bauland@knipp.de> wrote:

 

    Hi Bill,

   

    thanks for the summary.

   

    I agree with you if purely looking at the visual confusability issue.

    However, with ae vs. æ and oe vs. œ the issue is not about visual

    sameness, at least that's what the IP argued on our phone call. They

    said that in most languages ae and æ have the same meaning and could be

    exchanged. I can only talk for German, and there it might be ok to write

    ae instead of the ligature but certainly not the other way round. But to

    be honest, I personally never used such a word in German.

   

    Therefore the reason to make ae and its ligature variants would be

    purely semantic. And then we have a problem: how to decide which variant

    relation is stronger? If all are visual, it's (more or less) easy to

    decide which visual similarity is stronger, but there's no metric to

    compare visual and semantic similarities with each other.

   

    Cheers,

   

    Michael

   

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