Hebrew cantillation marks

[dscorbett]

Font

NotoSansHebrew-Regular.ttf
NotoSerifHebrew-Regular.ttf

Where the font came from, and when

Site: https://noto-website-2.storage.googleapis.com/pkgs/NotoSansHebrew-unhinted.zip
Site: https://noto-website-2.storage.googleapis.com/pkgs/NotoSerifHebrew-unhinted.zip
Date: 2018-03-04

Font version

Version 2.000;GOOG;noto-source:20170915:90ef993387c0

Issue

Many Hebrew cantillation marks are positioned badly.

These should be below but are below left.

• U+0591 HEBREW ACCENT ETNAHTA
• U+0596 HEBREW ACCENT TIPEHA
• U+059B HEBREW ACCENT TEVIR
• U+05A2 HEBREW ACCENT ATNAH HAFUKH
• U+05A3 HEBREW ACCENT MUNAH
• U+05A4 HEBREW ACCENT MAHAPAKH
• U+05A5 HEBREW ACCENT MERKHA
• U+05A6 HEBREW ACCENT MERKHA KEFULA
• U+05A7 HEBREW ACCENT DARGA
• U+05AA HEBREW ACCENT YERAH BEN YOMO

These should be above but are above left.

• U+0592 HEBREW ACCENT SEGOL
• U+0597 HEBREW ACCENT REVIA
• U+059C HEBREW ACCENT GERESH
• U+05A8 HEBREW ACCENT QADMA

These should be below right but are below left.

• U+059A HEBREW ACCENT YETIV
• U+05AD HEBREW ACCENT DEHI

These should be above right but are above.

• U+059D HEBREW ACCENT GERESH MUQDAM
• U+05A0 HEBREW ACCENT TELISHA GEDOLA

This should be above left but is above.

• U+05AE HEBREW ACCENT ZINOR

In Noto Serif Hebrew, all the cantillation marks, including those not listed above, are positioned too far left when the base is U+05E9 HEBREW LETTER SHIN.

All of the marks above are a bit too low in Noto Serif Hebrew: in some combinations of letter and accent, the accent touches the letter.

U+0599 HEBREW ACCENT PASHTA is above left, which is correct; but it is so far left it isn’t above any part of the base letter, which is too far.

Many of these cantillation marks should go directly above or directly below, where they might overlap vowel points or other marks. In that case, the cantillation mark should be shifted left a bit and the other mark should be shifted right a bit. I assume this is why so many of them are too far left, but this shifting should be contextual.

Character data

ש֢
U+05E9 HEBREW LETTER SHIN
U+05A2 HEBREW ACCENT ATNAH HAFUKH

Screenshot

[dscorbett]

This bug is also present in Noto Rashi Hebrew.

[nizarsq]

Issue reported still reproduacble in NotoSansHebrew, NotoSerifHebrew and NotoRashiHebrew

[kosmynkab]

The positioning issue of the cantillation marks most likely comes from the simplification of the system. There is no complex mark positioning in the files - the glyphs are placed only relying on anchors - hence the "not-perfect" placement. Can be resolved with the next update for the Noto Hebrew to support biblical typesetting.

[curya]

To add to this, U+05AA should not be drawn with the bottom vertical tick. ב֪
U+05AA is currently just a copy of U+05A2. ב֢

[simoncozens]

The fix for this may be to port John Hudson's SBL code to Adobe feature syntax.