Improvements to Cyrillic glyphs

[rsms]

As #567 never really made it into production, let's make whatever improvements to Cyrillic that I can manage

[rsms]

After bae1c01:

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE "б" was redesigned after reading https://typejournal.ru/en/articles/Cyrillic-Be-Vision

[ravid-dubsteper]

your shape of the letter -б- is a bit complicated, so I suggest updating the old version

[XenBG]

Hello, @rsms! I was wondering if there is an ETA for the different forms of Cyrillic, such as Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, etc.? Are they already in development?

[alles-plus-jetzt]

Also wondering about extended Cyrillic support, esp. Bulgarian letterforms.

[rsms]

Thank you for the thoughtful suggestion @ravid-dubsteper!

[rsms]

@XenBG [...] I was wondering if there is an ETA for the different forms of Cyrillic [...]

It sounds like someone promised you these? I'm afraid there are no plans for localized letterforms at this time. I'm not a native Cyrillic person so I wouldn't be able to do a good job anyways. If a Cyrillic-expert type designer would want to help, I'd be delighted to work with them :)

[XenBG]

@XenBG [...] I was wondering if there is an ETA for the different forms of Cyrillic [...]

It sounds like someone promised you these? I'm afraid there are no plans for localized letterforms at this time. I'm not a native Cyrillic person so I wouldn't be able to do a good job anyways. If a Cyrillic-expert type designer would want to help, I'd be delighted to work with them :)

I assumed that in version 4 you would also work on glyphs designed according to modern Bulgarian typography, which is why I decided to ask. It seems, however, that you don't have plans to do this independently, for which I apologize. I had no idea. Nevertheless, I have forwarded this information to a professional typographer with extensive experience and work on popular fonts for major names in the industry, who may be able to assist you.

[alles-plus-jetzt]

@XenBG [...] I was wondering if there is an ETA for the different forms of Cyrillic [...]

It sounds like someone promised you these? I'm afraid there are no plans for localized letterforms at this time. I'm not a native Cyrillic person so I wouldn't be able to do a good job anyways. If a Cyrillic-expert type designer would want to help, I'd be delighted to work with them :)

@rsms I think I know someone who might be interested and has the sufficient expertise, at least when it comes to the Bulgarian letterforms @vlaeslav

[harley-acheson]

Some of the missing parts of the “Cyrillic Supplement” block are fairly simple and would make entire languages available, Note that I am unilingually English, and my interest is in language coverage in the Blender 3D program.

For the Abkhazian language (used by 200,000 people and is classified as Vulnerable by UNESCO) we just need three characters. Each of them is a variation on characters already in the set, so you can just copy an existing character and make small changes to it.

• U+049E : Ҟ - Capital letter KA with stroke (copy from U+049C or U+049A and make changes)
• U+0524 : Ԥ - Capital letter PE with descender (copy from U+041F and add descender)
• U+0525 : ԥ - Small letter PE with descender (copy from U+043F and add descender)

The Kurdish language can be supported by simply copying characters within the font:

• U+051A : Ԛ - Capital letter QA (literally just copy uppercase “Q”)
• U+051B : ԛ - Small letter QA (literally just copy lowercase “q”)
• U+051C : Ԝ - Capital letter WE (literally just copy uppercase “W”)
• U+051D : ԝ - Small letter WE (literally just copy lowercase “w”)

Azerbaijani can be supported by adding just two characters:

• U+0526 : Ԧ - Capital letter SHHA with descender (copy from U+04BA and add descender)
• U+0527 : ԧ - Small letter SHHA with descender (copy from U+04BB and add descender)

Cheers, Harley

[sk1nzz]

Cyrillic small letter ka (к) is still not very good, it has the similar issue that the capital К had in versions before 4.0. I suggest fixing it like that: