Medieval Unicode Font Initiative

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Proposals for new characters

After the publication of v. 3.0 of the MUFI character recommendation on 24 June 2009, a few characters remain in the pipeline and a few have been proposed after the deadline. All of them will be considered for inclusion in the next verison of the MUFI recommendation.

Proposals for v. 3.0 of the recommendation can be accessed here:

Pipeline for v. 3.0

1. From Karl Pentzlin, Schongau, Germany:

DOUBLE STRAIGHT HYPHEN

This character was postponed from v. 3.0. Further consideration is needed.

Background:

The double straight hyphen is heavily used by the important German author Arno Schmidt (see e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Schmidt). As Arno Schmidt lived 1914-1979, the proposed character is not Medieval, but since other characters in MUFI also originate from more recent sources, the character would not a priori seem to be inappropriate.

There is an example at http://www.acssoft.de/ArnoSchmidt1.jpg. This is a scan from Arno Schmidt, Abend mit Goldrand, p. 143 of the 1993 edition. The double hyphen can be found within the red circles, together with some single hyphens and (differently looking) equation signs on the same page, showing that the character is not a font variant of the latter two.

At http://www.acssoft.de/ArnoSchmidt2.jpg (a scan of Dieter E. Zimmer, Sprache im Zeichen ihrer Unverbesserlichkeit, Hamburg 2005, p. 169), there is a quotation of a text from Arno Schmidt. Here, the double hyphen is misprinted as an equation sign, due to lack of a proper double hyphen type. Note, however, that the double hyphen is cited beside single hyphens within the same text part. This shows that the double hyphen is really needed not only when transcribing or quoting from the text of the author, but also when writing about his work e.g. in Germanistic texts.

The proposed name has been chosen in contrast to the Unicode character U+2E17 DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN.

2. From Alexei Lavrentev, Lyon, France:

LATIN PUNCTUATION MARK PARAPH

This character was postponed from v. 3.0. Further consideration is needed.

Background:

This character is called 'paraph' (Malcolm Parkes 1992, p. 43) or 'pied-de-mouche' (in French paleography). It is the ancestor of the pilcrow sign (Unicode 00B6) and a "brother" of 'paragraphus' (MUFI F1E1). Its shape is clearly different from these two, though (see illustrations), and I think it should have a codepoint of its own.

Fig. 2.1. Ms. Lyon, BM, 768 (15th century).

Fig. 2.2. Ms. Lyon, BM, 765 (15th century).

3. From Florian Grammel, København, Denmark:

In his edition of Stjórn, Reidar Astås reads a ligature of “uu” with double acute in AM 227 fol, fol. 50va, as shown below.

Fig. 3.1. AM 227 fol, fol. 50va. See the 5th word on the 2nd line.

Since there is no ligature “uu” in the MUFI spec, a base character as well as a precomposed character will be proposed:

LATIN SMALL LIGATURE UU
LATIN SMALL LIGATURE UU WITH DOUBLE ACUTE

Furthermore, Reidar Astås reads the ligature “oe” with ogonek in AM 617 4to, fol. 10ra.

Fig. 3.2. From the edition.

LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE WITH OGONEK

In her edition of Tíódels saga and Elíss saga, Tove Hovn Ohlsson reports that there is a small “p” with double acute occurring in the ms. Lbs 989 4to, fol. 193r (date: 1791/1794):

LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH DOUBLE ACUTE