Diacritical: őŐűŰ acute and double acute have differently-angled accents

Examples from screenshot above are: "főváros" and "első év".

I'll grant you that it does look a bit off-putting! Thank you for bringing it up, lets see if Dalton Maag can advise.

Thorsten: do you have any examples of fonts that you think handle the acute/double-acute very well, and which you find comfortable reading?

The reason that the Hungarian double-acute is at a different angle to the single acute is simply that you cannot place two acutes next to each other if set at the flat angle as in the acute. You will find that most fonts have a double-acute angle different to the single, so this is standard practice. Changing the single acute angle to be steeper will offend all Western Europeans and have an impact on recognisability when compared to the grave.

In addition one can argue that were the acutes all the same angle there could be potential for confusion as to the identification to which character the acutes belong, particularly at small sizes and in low resolution environments. By differentiating the angle this confusion is avoided.

Surely there's a middle ground in angle, at which both single and double
look appropriate?

Expectations on the design of accents have diverged considerably in
different regions. Modern European users expect their acute and grave
accents to be wider, and shallower, than they traditionally were.

The problem then comes that simply doubling-up the accent becomes
physically impossible - there just isn't space over most characters. All
we can do is treat the double-accents as designs in their own right, and
do our best to make them as clear as they can be.

The set-up I'm proofing the fonts on has the double-accents looking
fine, so if others are seeing rasterization problems, we'd like to see
screenshots.

Dave

It's difficult. If you look at something like Arial, its accents are
very narrow and very steep, but the result can be indistinct on screen,
and, to modern European users, unsatisfactory on paper.

By the time you get to an angle which a modern Western European user
will be comfortable with, you're past the point at which you can put two
of them next to each other and not have them blob together.

So, we may as well treat them as what they are to modern eyes - diverged
designs.

Dave

nb. to self, there is Cyrillic U aswell: (ӳӲ).

Dave: I don't think (based on the screenshot above) that it's a rasterisation issue, but more of a problem that (to the reporter's eyes, and perhaps to my own) the full set of Hungarian vowels don't play quite in harmony with each other:

 aá eé ií oó öő uú üű

I suspect that the solution will not be an easy, or obvious one, but with such a small number of letters using this diacritical (two Hungarian, one Cyrillic) (each in upper/lower) it should probably be possible to do something "special" for those three/six to make things work, which is not necessarily just about doubling up the existing accent.

Dave: I don't think there is a desire to just blindly copy what any existing typeface does, but I do think it's something that can be fixed to some degree.

Having the two acutes at the lower angle that close together starts to look a bit heavy, but with a bit of thinning I think it can be made to work... see the attached two-minute proof-of-concept PDF.

Paul: The actual shape of acutes/double acutes matters little to readers of Hungarian, as long as they are the same. In fact, shapes can vary widely between typefaces. See, e.g., http://www.flickr.com/photos/24267970@N02/ for the wide variety in signage typefaces. There, you'll find short, vertical rectangles; very long and very thin lines that are almost horizontal; even triangles. What all of these have in common, though, is that whatever the form of the acute, the form of the double acute will be identical to two single acutes, placed closely together. More traditional (non-display) typefaces used in print and on screen commonly use acutes and double acutes with a shape close or identical to French and other Romance languages.

Bruno: Does DM have any Hungarian employees or partners? If so, talk to them! Being able to distinguish between acutes and graves is a non-issue in Hungarian, as is possible confusion between ő and óó. If readers of Hungarian have to choose between between well-designed ő and ű glyphs that look beautiful in isolation and others that are consistent with á, é, í, ó, ú, they will come down on the side of consistency. That's what readers of Hungarian expect. If redesigning the double acute marks is undesirable for stylistic reasons, I'd suggest providing a set of matching á, é, í, ó, ú glyphs (along with the capital versions) as stylistic alternatives (OpenType to the rescue!). (Your assertion that "most fonts have a double-acute angle different to the single" may — if it is indeed correct — have more to do with the fact that most Latin typefaces are designed by non-Hungarians. This does not mean that such fonts are considered appropriate for Hungarian typography by readers of the language.)

Paul (again): On the contrary, to readers of Hungarian, vowel diacritics harmonize perfectly. a, e, i, o, ö, u, ü are all short vowels, while á, é, í, ó, ő, ű are all long vowels. That's why it's so important that the accent forms of ó and ő match. (The dots over i, j, ö, and ü — all short vowels — also match, BTW.)
 Of your POC, the second line is fine. The third line only moves the problem. Differing (general) shapes are just as bad as different angles. I'll try to find examples of good designs later.

I'm adding a crop of a Hungarian passport page. It should illustrate how consistent acutes and double acutes can be designed even for relatively shallow stroke forms.

I'm adding a PDF with common system fonts for Linux and Windows, respectively. It should be straightforward to see that all — with the exception of the new Ubuntu — have acutes and double acutes that closely match.

I just hit this "in anger" for the first time, reading some material on Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál) and the contrast of single and double acute accents was a bit unsettling; it reminded me of the hair on a:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_doll

sticking up uncomfortably.

An image search for "Erdős Pál" turned up a couple of additional examples of Hungarian typography, which might be helpful in illustrating appropriate acute–double acute pairs. http://erdosprog.mik.vein.hu/themes/bluezone/img/sitename.png is another example of how matching forms take precedent over aesthetic considerations regarding the isolated double acute. The sans-serif display font in http://mik.uni-pannon.hu/rolunk/200912/regio_erdos1.jpg demonstrates how acutes and double-acute forms don't have to match 100% to still appear to be matching well visually.

Thorsten: do you have any good example of the same single- and double-acute pairs in italic fonts.

I was perhaps wondering if we could be free-er in style in the Italic.

Hi Paul:

On 11/04/2010 12:30 PM, Paul Sladen wrote:
> Thorsten: do you have any good example of the same single- and double-
> acute pairs in italic fonts.

I'm afraid I can't think of where those pairs are treated differently in
significant ways in italic and roman styles.

For what it's worth, it seems it may be easier to get the pairs to match
in italic styles. The current version of Ubuntu is a good example: the
problem is much more pronounced in the roman styles.

(It may be a matter of considerable debate if the italics styles need to
be "fixed" at all, at least for text sizes. For display sizes, a minor
tweak of either the acute or double acute might not be a bad idea. Then
again, I'm not sure if Ubuntu is intended to be used as a display font.
I can imagine uses, e.g., on banners, posters and such by LUGs, other
advocacy groups or Linux support providers, but that may not be a top
priority for you guys right now.)

> I was perhaps wondering if we could be free-er in style in the Italic.

Again, I'm not sure. This may be one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it
situations. It might help that strokes often appear to be somewhat
finer/thinner/more slender in italic styles, so having more slender
acutes (which in turn can match the corresponding double acutes more
easily) might be easier to achieve there.

2010-12-14 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.70

  Release notes 0.70:
  * (Design) Add Capitalised version of glyphs and kern. (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) DM (LP: #676538, #677446)
  * (Design) Give acute and grave a slight upright move to more match
    the Hungarian double acute angle. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #656647)
  * (Design) Shift Bold Italic accent glyphs to be consistent with the
    Italic. (BdIt only) DM (LP: #677449)
  * (Design) Check spacing and kerning of dcaron, lcaron and
    tcaron. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #664722)
  * (Design) Add positive kerning to () {} [] to open out the
    combinations so they are less like a closed box. (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #671228)
  * (Design) Change design of acute.asc and check highest points (Bd
    and BdIt only) DM
  * (Production) Update <case> feature. DM (LP: #676538, #676539)
  * (Production) Remove Romanian locl feature. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
    (LP: #635615)
  * (Production) Update Copyright information with new
    strings. "Copyright 2010 Canonical Ltd. Licensed under the Ubuntu
    Font Licence 1.0" Trademark string "Ubuntu and Canonical are
    registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd." (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) DM
    (LP: #677450)
  * (Design) Check aligning of hyphen, math signs em, en, check braces
    and other brackets. 16/11 (LP: #676465)
  * (Production) Pixel per em indicator added at U+F000 (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #615787)
  * (Production) Version number indicator added at U+EFFD (Rg, It, Bd,
    BdIt) (LP: #640623)
  * (Production) fstype bit set to 0 - Editable (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
    (LP: #648406)