Cyrillic: Macedonian Cyrillic Italics: гѓ should look like reverse-latin s with bar (and acute)

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  $ pango-view --output mk-cyrillic-cursive-g-j.pdf --language mk --font '50' --markup --text '<span font="Ubuntu">бдгѓптзк<span color="#900">љњ</span>ѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#900">гѓ</span>птзк<span color="#900">љњ</span>ѐѝ</i> <span color="#eee"></span></span>
<span font="DejaVu Serif">бдгѓптзкљњѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#060">гѓ</span>птзк<span color="#060">љњ</span>ѐѝ</i></span>
<span font="DejaVu Sans">бдгѓптзк<span color="#060">љњ</span>ѐѝ <i>бд<span color="#990">гѓ</span>птзкљњѐѝ</i></span> '

Hi Paul,
I would say that the exact shape of the г and ѓ depends on the font and the artist, so it can be a more curvy or the more straight-up form. The important thing is that in the Macedonian cyrillic alphabet, they should look the same, and they both need to have the bar. Practically ѓ is always the same with г but with the acute added above the bar.

For reference, there's an image on the wikipedia page about the Macedonian cyrillic alphabet,
http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Македонско_ракописно_писмо - it's highly stylized hand-written form, but could be considered the "official" look (that's what we get taught in school).

Thanks for that Damjan; looking on there I can see why it might have been mistaking for being close to a Latin lowercase 'i'. Do you have any other examples (who you be able to scan any examples written in your own handwriting?).

More linkable (but less readable) version of that link that image and the page it's on:

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mk/1/15/Makedonsko_rakopisno_pismo.png
  http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%BE

Can I check/get this version from somewhere?

gdamjan: the current version 0.80 is in Ubuntu and available for down from:

  http://font.ubuntu.com/

The proposed solution has not been undertaken yet.

PDF showing proposed design of "г ѓ" kursive for Russian/Serbian/Macedonian.

Are the glyphs correct? Are the bars in the correct position? Is the shape acceptable? Is the kursive localisation selection for ru/rs/mk correct?

PDF showing proposed design of "г ѓ" kursive for Russian/Serbian/Macedonian.

Are the glyphs correct? Are the bars in the correct position? Is the shape acceptable? Is the kursive localisation selection for ru/rs/mk correct?

Had a long (and inconclusive) discussion on #ubuntu-rs about the above. Thank you to those who took part:

  http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/12/06/%23ubuntu-rs.html#t22:34

and particularly those looking into getting some firmer academic clarification.

I done some research on forum specialized in serbian linguistics.
According to this thread http://www.vokabular.org/forum/index.php?topic=1177.0 serbian lowercas ge (г) in cursive should look like this: ƨ̄, ī is stylized variation.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Serbian_Cyrillic_cursive2.png is good example of serbian handwriting except г should be curved. (Man who drew this picture himself said ƨ̄ is correct form. He is wikipedia contributor and serbian linguist)

  1. Russian kursive: 'г' is probably correct ('ƨ' agreed no bar)
  2. Macedonian kursive: 'гѓ' is probably correct ('ƨ̄ƨ̄́' agreed yes bar)
  3. Serbian kursive: 'г' people don't agree on ('ƨ' vs. 'ƨ̄'; possibly one is older and one is newer)
  4. All Cyrillic kursive: unsure whether it's an 'ι' or 'ƨ'; and can't agree In hand-writing it seems to be something that is halfway between (neither of them exactly); but again, not clear cut.
  5. The way that Default + Overrides works. I've had several answers about "ѓ isn't in Russian and Serbian". The characters are always present in the font (otherwise people wouldn't be able to write lonewords/ or text from another language without chaning your font!). It's just a question of what to do when there is *extra* lang= information available at the language of that piece of text.

I can confirm that the Russian glyphs are correct, both for regular and italic.
But the г does not have an accent in modern Russian. You might need the accent to write other languages, as Paul already stated.

Г could not have accent in any Slavic language, in Macedonian accute is aded to г and that letter is counterpart to Serbian ђ.
It sems ge with bar is registered in Unicode as Serbian/Macedonian form. http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm

@Далибор: the handwriting example you give on http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Serbian_Cyrillic_cursive2.png is the correct form, and no, it should not be "curved". The "reverse s" form (with the bar) derives from Russian "g", and is not traditionally Serbian.

Also, the thread you mention on vokabular is not very definite. The person with the above hand-writing claims how his handwriting is incorrect and that the Russian form should be used instead (with the bar on top). Nobody else claims any authority in that thread, so it should not be trusted. I believe current form of the lowercase "g" should be kept for Serbian Italic variants.

His hand-writing is the *correct* form. In sans-serif italic fonts, it is customary to drop the "connecting" line on the left (the "/" part), and thus we end up with the form as in Ubuntu fonts today. Please do not ask for this to be broken so it agrees with someone's confused statements.

Btw, that link you provide for ghe-with-bar also supports the fact that ghe is not curved: http://jankojs.tripod.com/tiro_serbian.jpg

@Paul: Comments like "character not used in Serbian" mean that those reading Serbian would not care much whatever style it takes. If some Macedonian text appears in an otherwise Serbian-tagged text, it would sure make more sense to use the same base glyph as in Serbian, simply from the legibility standpoint.

Just like most Serbians would probably prefer to read Russian Cyrillic using Serbian Cyrillic style (i.e. this is a property of someone's locale and not of the text). I don't have data to back this statement up, though. Also, those Serbians who actually know Russian would be more likely to disagree.

Attached image should further illustrate why is current "ghe" right for Serbian. If anything, it is missing the bottom right "continuation" stem. Basically, in the current form, it has the left-side continuation stem removed, just like eg. lowercase "п", so that's fine. The fact that it's missing the right-hand side stem might be what's causing the confusion.

The alternative Serbian г with the same bottom-right stem end like lowercase п: this would perhaps be an improvement, but I don't feel strongly about it.