Mtavruli glyphs needed

[r12a]

This issue is applicable to Georgian.

Dedicated mtavruli Unicode characters were only introduced in Unicode v11 (2018). Prior to that, authors had to use special fonts with the mkhedruli code points in order to write mtavruli letters, and CSS text-transforms (ie. to uppercase) had no effect. Unicode 11 introduced not just the new characters, but also mappings from mkhedruli (lowercase) to mtavruli (uppercase).

Note that Mtavruli is only used for ALL CAPS typography, and is not used at the beginning of a sentence or for proper nouns.

Tests & results:
interactive test, Fonts display characters needed for modern Georgian text

This test includes all characters used for Mkhedruli and Mtravruli in modern Georgian (source) and has been tested on macOS and Windows10. To run the test, open the link on each platform, click on the F icon, top left, and mouse over the pre-installed font names listed for the appropriate platform.

Test passes if you see no tofu.

The results for macOS 12.2.1 are as follows:
Menlo ✅ Helvetica ✅ Helvetica Neue ✅ (Arial Unicode MS ❌)

Results for Windows10
Segoe UI ✅ Calibri ✅ Sylfaen ❌

MacOS Catalina and iOS 13 introduced support for Georgian uppercase letters using updated Helvetica (2019).

Microsoft added new Mtavruli characters to their Calibri (version 6.32) font on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update 1809 and to Segoe UI (version 5.62) on the Windows 10 May 2019 Update 1903.

Google updated Noto Georgian fonts to cover Georgian Extended characters. These fonts are not included in Android 10, but they are already used by Manjaro Linux (Arch Linux), which has latest glibc libraries, so Mtavruli is fully supported there and Georgian capital letters can be typed using Caps Lock.

Support for Arial New Unicode was discontinued some time ago by Microsoft, so it is likely that any content relying on that font won't include Mtavruli characters anyway.

Priority:
When first raised this issue was marked as basic. Given the new support added to various pre-installed fonts on Mac and Windows and the other platforms mentioned, the priority is reduced to advanced.

[r12a]

The first comment in this issue contains text that will automatically appear in the Georgian gap-analysis document as a subsection with the same title as this issue. Any edits made to that comment will be immediately available in the document. Proposals for changes or discussion of the content can be made in comments below this point.

[AG12r]

I think, this info needs to be updated.

Microsoft added new Mtavruli characters to their Calibri (version 6.32) font on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update 1809 and to Segoe UI (version 5.62) on the Windows 10 May 2019 Update 1903.

macOS Catalina and iOS 13 also can display Georgian uppercase letters using updated Helvetica. (2019)
Additionally, CSS text-transform is working in Safari (webkit) as expected.

Google updated Noto Sans Georgian fonts 6 months ago and now they cover Georgian Extended characters.
These fonts are not included in Android 10, but they are already used by Manjaro Linux (Arch Linux), which has latest glibc libraries, so Mtavruli is fully supported there and Georgian capital letters can be typed using Caps Lock.

[r12a]

@AG12r this is great information. Thank you. I'll put some tests together, then change the text above.

[r12a]

@AG12r i finally got around to updating this. Sorry it took so long. Thanks again for your help. I'd like to add you to the acknowledgements section: how would you like your name to appear?

Btw, are they other barriers to use of modern Georgian on the Web that we should capture here?

[fred-wang]

Patches to work around that issue landed in 2018 in Chromium and Firefox:
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1205712/
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476304

However, per previous comments, fonts were already updated in 2020 to cover the missing glyphs and pre-installed installed in major platforms (but Android).

Testing now with macOS, Windows, Linux and Android and iOS the Georgian Extended characters at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts#Unicode seem to render properly. So I wonder whether this is still an issue?

[r12a]

Thanks for bringing my attention to this @fred-wang. This issue actually included 2 separate problems: (a) the lack of font support, and (b) the problems using CSS to convert to uppercase. I therefore rewrote it, limiting the scope to the former (which agrees with the title and the labels), and i'm creating a new issue to address the conversion problem.

I also lowered the priority on this, given current support, but i didn't close the issue completely because there is still a pre-installed font on macOS that doesn't support the Mtavruli characters (and there aren't many pre-installed fonts available for Georgian).

I added a result for Arial Unicode MS on the Mac, but it's not clear to me that that is a blocking issue since MS has now discontinued maintenance for that font and i'm guessing that content created with it probably didn't use Mtavruli characters anyway.

[r12a]

For a gap report related to case conversion see #30

[AG12r]

@fred-wang @r12a However, some of the major linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse) still don't support the Mtavruli letters. Can we somehow speed-up this process? Also, many people are using the older versions of Android.

[fred-wang]

@AG12r I guess someone will need to file an issue to these distributions' bug tracker, asking to update their fonts (I guess Noto Sans Georgian)...

[r12a]

@svgeesus do you have any suggestions about how to influence font distributions such as those mentioned above?

[AG12r]

@fred-wang OK, I'll try that. But I don't know, if it will get the attention of developers. I've already tried something like this (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133535) with no success.
Also, there was a discussion about an issue of Mtavruli on Redhat's bugzilla (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1619530), but they did not decide to add Noto Sans.

[svgeesus]

do you have any suggestions about how to influence font distributions such as those mentioned above?

I do not, sorry.