[Koha] Russian Language characters in public catalog

[Andy Boze]

What you're looking for is a class of Unicode characters called 
combining marks. In this specific case, you're looking for combining 
half marks, which when put together span multiple characters, such as 
the ligatures used to transcribe Cyrillic characters in Latin characters.

Not all fonts contain the Unicode block that supports combining marks. 
Arial is a common font that happens to have that support, so you'll 
often find it used in library catalogs.

In my library's discovery system, it seems that whenever characters need 
the combining marks, they are forced to use the Arial font by placing 
then within an HTML <span> element styled with Arial as the font, like this.

<span class="combined-half-mark">i︠a︡</span>

You'll find some records at < 
https://onesearch.library.nd.edu/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,vospominanii%EF%B8%A0a%EF%B8%A1&tab=nd_campus&search_scope=nd_campus&vid=NDU&lang=en_US&offset=0 
 >.

I don't know how they get enclosed in the span element. It well could be 
through the use of Javascript, as you suggested in a previous e-mail.

Wikipedia has some information on combining half marks at < 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_Half_Marks >. If you want to try 
using Javascript to detect these marks, I found this article that might 
be of interest, < 
https://dmitripavlutin.com/what-every-javascript-developer-should-know-about-unicode/ 
 >.

Andy

On 1/26/2020 1:04 PM, Eric Phetteplace wrote:
> Ineed after asking on Twitter, I discovered the arch is not an accent, but
> a ligature meant to indicate that two latinate characters are representing
> one Cyrllic one. It's apparently an idiosyncrasy of library cataloging:
> 
> "Yup, left ligature and right ligature. It's because library
> transliteration values absolute precision over readability. Just writing ia
> could be, in theory, either иа or я, so the ligatures signify that it's all
> one letter under there."
> https://twitter.com/marccold/status/1220858664560529408
> 
> Honestly though, it doesn't matter what language or meaning the symbol has,
> it doesn't render correctly in our catalog so I'm still stuck. I wonder if
> anyone else has a solution that doesn't involve simply using Arial. I see a
> lot of catalog records with this ligature and yet not every catalog is
> forced to use one of the small selection of fonts that support it, I hope.
> 
> Best,
> 
> ERIC PHETTEPLACE Systems Librarian (he/him)
> 
> ephetteplace at cca.edu | o 510.594.3660
> 
> 5212 Broadway | Oakland, CA | 94618
> 
> :(){ :|: & };:
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 4:15 AM le-grex <post at grex.is-lost.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> Am 26.01.20 um 12:54 schrieb le-grex:
>> *snip*
>>>
>>> So his latin Name is M. Saryan. Or in russian, М. Сарьян. I would not
>>> expect to see this pronounciation signs in a book search, since they are
>>> not part of his name. But i'm not a Librarian in the way that i know
>>> what the demands of these things are.
>>
>> Excuse me, i meant "М. Сарьян" without the pronounciation sign ;)
>>
>> *snip*
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-- 
Andy Boze, Associate Librarian
University of Notre Dame
208A Hesburgh Library
(574) 631-8708