Unicode text - handling discritics

• Jul 14, 2019 - 17:25

System: Windows 7 with Service Pack SP! and all patches.
MS version: 3.0.5.5992
Issue: handling of diacritics in Unicode text.

This sample word: raò́ (which is malformed here, but I do not have WOFF fonts installed) should show a Grave accent with an Acute accent stacked above it; (such stacking is common outside European languages). This would look like a left pointing arrow, but it is necessary for the language concerned to use the diacritics. What MuseScore does is to "unstack" the diacritics while still correctly positioning them above the vowel "o". The lower, Grave accent is to the left; the upper, Acute accent, is to the right. Think of the effect as resembling "bunny ears" on the "o". The font used in the text is Kayan Unicode, designed by a linguistic expert who contributes to Libre Office amongst other projects, so I am confident there is no problem with the font.

Can MS fix this?

Attached: Score (last word, last verse, page 2).
Font: Kayan Unicode as zip
Plain text sample of correct text (in a plain text editor set encoding to UTF_8 and the font to 12pt using the attached font)

Attachment Size
KBCM_023.mscz 16.34 KB
KAYANUNI-REGULAR.zip 314.93 KB
K_Diacritic example.txt 151 bytes

Comments

Not speaking English I may not understand but:
When you enter text, for example with Ctrl+L, note the special characters icon at the bottom right (or press F2).
You should find what you need.

Attachment Size
19071403.png 150.62 KB

In reply to by Shoichi

Afraid not. The icon only gives access to composed characters. What I have to deal with are decomposed characters. Which involve stacked diacritics. The icon does not even offer the combining diacritics in the Unicode range U+0300 following.

I shall make enquiries about the font, but at the moment it is more likely that MuseScore needs tweaking.

In reply to by Chiff

I see this:
KBCM_023.png
What is wrong about that?
As I don't have your font installed, MusyeScore uses a fallback font here, in my case MS Shell Dlg 2.

In the inisitl pose you wrote:

raò́ (which is malformed here, but I do not have WOFF fonts installed) should show a Grave accent with an Acute accent stacked above it

I don't see it being malformed it does have a grave and acute accent stacked, in the same way as in the image I took from within MuseScore

In reply to by Chiff

The explanation is stranger than we could imagine. The "bunny ears" rendering of the diacritics over the vowel "o" is the correct writing style for the particular language. The font specialist was asked to specially modify a well known and widely used linguistic font, Charis SIL, only to achieve this one effect. Unexpectedly, the font is as intended, and MuseScore is handling it correctly. No other Unicode font, fallback or otherwise, would give the right result.

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