Cyrillic in fonts

I write this article mostly just for myself: for making easier to check fonts, and to report in future. Because I noted some common patterns. Just in case: I'm not a font-maker, I'm still a user. Cyrillic isn't just Russian Well, it's very obvious statement. But from my expierence, it isn't so much. For the start, it would be nice to add at least all modern Slavic letters. You can add by a group as a stage. Eastern group is Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian (with Rusyn). Southern one is the rest: Macedonian, Montenegrin and Serbian — basically, those alphabets which are based on an orthography by Vuk. As you may expect, a base is for both Eastern and Southern. Vowels Consonants Signs and semivowels [they're included in alphabets] Some letters here, like some Montegerin ones, can be only with combining diacritics. Still, don't forget to decompose letters for checking their visual. This may happen, mostly during some programming shenanigans. Also have a respect to zero-width non-joiner. It matters to Latin too: when I write something like i +  + ◌́  , then, please, keep the dot, not replace it as under a normal condition. About punctuations, it's basically the same as in Latin. I would only note, that some Ukrainians may use a modifie letter apostrophe instead instead: an apostrohe , a signle [mostly right] quatation mark , and in some rare cases a grave accent . Do you love history? If so, then maybe you want add leters at least from Early Cyrillic, on which, I didn't mentioned before, Eastern group is based. If you add a letter from one group, then it's better to add a whole group (if it's not from «not common»). And, yeah, if you add a group from «vowels», you add a corresponding group from «consonants» too. So, yeah, by this note adding ѧ but not ѩ is totally okay. For some reason I was in a situation many times where a font has ѫ but not ѧ which is very strange at least for two reasons: it's a classic pair as ъ and ь, and by linguistics (at least for Eastern) ѧ is more important. Vowels Consonants Of course, there're more symbols, but those are usually enough. Letters aren't alone Surprise (not), but Cyrillic has diacritics too, as Greek or Latin. For some reason, it's very often omitted in fonts. You could noted that before I divided symbols into groups: consonants, vowels and signs. Well, it will be helpful here, because we speak here about only vowels. In Eastern those diacritics can be applied: - ◌́ an accute  - ◌̀ a grave  In Southern (and Historical) you include the previous part from Eastern, and those: - ◌̏ a double grave - ◌̄ a macron - ◌̑ an inverten breve Try to keep one type diacritic the same for all letters. Because, as for an example, I saw many times where ◌̈ a diæresis for ї and ё were different (by distance between dots, by hight from letter etc). And diacritics usually act as in Latin, for an example, [amost, just in case] any diacritic replace a dot within і. Also, її and ії are a common combination in Ukrainian, so itʼs better to avoid overlaping of dots here. For reminding, some base vowels and consonants can be decomposed into a letter and: - ◌̆ a breve - ◌̈ a diæresis - ◌́ an accute  I would note another obvious thing. All above is about standards. There're still other orthographies, including historical like by Hatcuk or Maksimovitch, Cyrillic-based transcriptions and so on may have other diacritics. So if your diacritic symbols will cover more letters, or be more independ from letters, then it would be better. All letters Composed — Decomposed — Without diacritic: Groups: - Top: letters should be displayed correctly - Middle: as a bonus example - Bottom: historical letters Regular ◌́ ◌̀ ◌̏ ◌̄ ◌̑ Localization There're at least three traditions of Cyrillic: - Bulgarian, also can be called as a straight cursive - Southern - Eastern, but without Bulgarian Some notes: - Cursive Ukrainian ґ doesn't act as г, thus it's better to keep this letter as in Ukrainian even for non-Eastern styles too. - Any diacritic symbol over ligature letters (ioted + uk) can be placed just at the middle, and it's a usual practice. But for more stylish way, you can put it over the second letter; as an example: in a case of ю́, put ◌́ just over o. Otherwise, as it was said, put it just at the middle, but higher a whole letter, which's important in case of Bulgarian style. Sadly, but, yeah, it may bring common problems for any tall letters in some cases.