[DejaVu-bugs] [Bug 68902] DejaVu Serif Italic Glyphs do not match non-italic glyphs.

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68902

--- Comment #3 from Ben Laenen <bl.bugs at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> Thank you for your quick response. I adore the Italic "a" & "z".
> My I ask, do you know why almost all computer fonts use an "a" like a
> rotated "e", when I have not seen anyone hand write an "a" this way?

It's actually pretty common to have a "double story a" as it's called (like the
upside down 'e') in the regular fonts, and a "single story a" that only has a
bowl (the circle) but no finial (the line at the top), even very popular fonts
like Times New Roman.

Italic was created in the early days of typeface design to mimic handwriting,
hence the single storey "a".

As to how exactly these shapes came to be the way they are, no idea about the
specifics. It's probably from the uppercase "A", joining the horizontal stem
and the left one in a single stroke and then lengthening the right stroke. If
you don't lengthen it you get the handwritten "a". But someone with a typeface
design degree will know much more about the how and why.

I do like to see handwritten texts in languages that use both styles of "a" for
different letters once, to see how they handle it...

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