iOS fonts (at least through 5.1) seem to have the glyphs for x03C6 (loopy phi) and x03D5 (straight phi) reversed. Mac fonts don't have this problem. This swap in the Unicode standard was made about 2000. Why are the iOS fonts wrong?
iOS 5.1.1
03c6 can properly be either loopy or straight. If you check various OS X fonts you will both variations. 03d5 should indeed be straight. OS X has one common font where it is nonetheless loopy: Palatino.
I am pretty sure iOS has fonts where 03d5 is straight as it should be (further testing needed), but unfortunately it seems the one often used by default is loopy. To ask Apple to fix it, one can use the feedback channels
Display of 03d5 by various iOS fonts:
I strongly disagree with your statement that "03c6 can properly be either loopy or straight"! When I write something, I should enjoy a reasonable expectation that the character that I write will be the same character when displayed on the recipient's machine, even if a font substitution is required. A STANDARD SHOULD BE A STANDARD! Early versions of the Unicode STANDARD assigned the straight phi to 03c6 (called the Greek letter phi) and the loopy phi to 03d5 (called the symbol phi). This convention was a little bit screwy: Greeks are indifferent to straight/loopy phi in Greek text and most technical documents use the straight phi as a symbol. At some point around the year 2000, the Unicode standard reversed the convention (maybe between 2.0 & 3.0). The resulting mess is even worse than before: some old fonts, like Palatino, have never been updated and the ones that have been updated usually do not include the 03d5 character at all. One might think that using only modern fonts would ensure consistency, but it ain't so: in 2007, Microsoft introduced 6 "ClearType" fonts (Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, & Corbel) that are a marvel of inconsistency:
Calibri, Consolas, Constantia, & Corbel display 03c6 as straight phi in normal, but loopy in italics!
Cambria & Candara properly display 03c as loopy in all forms.
I have been using UNIBOOK (available from http://unicode.org/unibook/) as my reference guide to the Unicode standard and many IMPORTANT iOS fonts do NOT comply with the standard, as can be seen for Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, & Courier New in the picture you supplied. The iOS font system is very adept at font substitutions, so I cannot really tell if these fonts have a true internal character for 03d5 (which should be a straigth phi).
Oops, I just noticed your picture was of 03d5 characters, not 03c6, in which case all but Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, & Courier New are wrong! And since they're not all consistent, at least some must have a true internal character for 03d5.
Unicrank wrote:
When I write something, I should enjoy a reasonable expectation that the character that I write will be the same character when displayed on the recipient's machine
That's correct, but sometimes "characters" have glyph variants that are equally "correct", and I think this is the case with 03c6. The Unicode reference is section 2.3.1 in
http://unicode.org/reports/tr25/#_Toc231
You need to use the feedback channel to complain to Apple about 03c6, these forums are just user-to-user.
PS For fonts not produced by Apple, you should complain directly to the people who make them.
I read the Unicode report, Section 2.3.1, and it seems to say "Font designers can put either loopy or straight phi for 03c6, but must put the straight phi for 03d5.". That means that there is no bullet-proof way to ensure that a loopy phi will produced in text, especially in text like this discussing the two glyphs. I would have preferred that it said "Authors can choose 03c6 (always loopy) or 03d5 (always straight) for the phi character in Greek text, but should use 03d5 (always straight) for mathematical/technical work; font designers should always provide a character for 03d5 (always straight phi)."
The choice of which glyph appears should be the author's choice, not left to the whims (or carelessness) of the font designer.
In any case, the common iOS font custom of loopy phi for 03d5 still violates the advice of Section 2.3.1 and suggests more carelessness than a justifiable choice.
I've ranted enough (my nom de plume, Unicrank should have been a tipoff). Thanks for your patient responses and I will try the feedback channel, as you suggested.
Unicrank wrote:
I would have preferred that it said "Authors can choose 03c6 (always loopy) or 03d5 (always straight) for the phi character in Greek text
I think that would be wrong. The character used for Greek language text should always be 03c6, that is what every normal Greek keyboard layout produces for phi, and that is what all search engines would look for when searching for words with that character in them. It is proper for the author to determine whether he wants it loopy or straight by selecting the appropriate font, and if he cares how others see it, to make sure that font is stipulated in any digital versions of his work.
I agree authors should always use 03d6 for math and fonts should always show this as straight. Likewise the default Greek font programmed by Apple for iOS/OS X should always be one with a straight 03d6.
I see your point, but I'm still not sure I agree completely.
I'm sure Greek keyboards produce 03c6 when the phi key is pressed, but most search engines can deal with worse things than 03c6/03d5 ambiguity; in searches, accent marks over vowels are mostly ignored, German ß is converted to ss, ö is equivalent to oe, etc.
I'll concede that getting straight phi into a technical document is a challenge and that the best solution, at least for Microsoft Office documents, is to insert 03d5, using one of the few fonts that actually have it defined, e.g., Arial Unicode MS, and then to embed the font (or at least the characters actually used in that font) into the document. But I still view that as a workaround for the sad fact that most Windows/Mac fonts don't have a 03d5 glyph.
It's not clear that one always has the option of stipulating fonts. For example, I'm not sure what fonts this page supports, but here are 03c6 & 03d5 (from Arial Unicode): φ ϕ. I'll see if both make it through.
iOS font errors
