Overview. This proposal adds an optional typographic control for ordinary sitelen pona cartouches: a glyph may be followed by one of the Unicode vulgar fractions ¼, ⅓, ½, ⅔, or ¾ to draw that one glyph at the corresponding fractional font scale inside the cartouche.
The fraction is a formatting instruction, not part of the proper name. It is not drawn. Full-size glyphs remain the default, and an author does not need to use scaling at all. The purpose is to give authors optional visual freedom to emphasize some glyphs and de-emphasize glyphs used mainly to help indicate pronunciation.
The same five controls may also be written with the ASCII aliases 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, and 3/4.
[kulupu⅔ :⅔ soweli,, pipi,, kala,, waso,, nena⅓ akesi]
Try the proposal
Enter one or more cartouches, choose a font and size, then render. This page uses the existing renderer, font-pair controller, font manifest and vector exporter directly; it does not load the text-to-sitelen page code.
Detailed proposal
1. Scope
Fractional scaling applies only inside ordinary sitelen pona cartouches. Outside a cartouche, the Unicode vulgar-fraction characters keep their ordinary visible meaning and are not formatting controls.
2. Available scale modifiers
| Unicode control | ASCII alias | Effect on the immediately preceding cartouche entry |
|---|---|---|
| ¼ | 1/4 | quarter scale |
| ⅓ | 1/3 | one-third scale |
| ½ | 1/2 | half scale |
| ⅔ | 2/3 | two-thirds scale |
| ¾ | 3/4 | three-quarter scale |
3. Postfix rule
A modifier applies to the single immediately preceding cartouche entry. The modifier itself is not drawn.
4. Optional authorial emphasis
Scaling is optional and does not change the linguistic value of the glyph or the proper name. A conventional unscaled cartouche remains valid. The proposal only gives the author an additional visual distinction when desired.
5. ASCII aliases
The ASCII forms are input conveniences. Within an ordinary cartouche, jan1/2 and jan½ request the same half-scale rendering. Fonts using underscore-style Latin ligatures may likewise accept the corresponding no-space underscore form where required by that font's convention.
6. Compounds, punctuation and spacing
The modifier belongs to the preceding rendered cartouche entry. Existing compound syntax remains separate. Colon and middle-dot entries remain inside the cartouche without breaking it. Using vulgar-fraction scaling with IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE or zz may or may not work for any given font.
7. Tallies
Where comma is used for the existing cartouche tally convention, tallies may follow a fraction-modified glyph. The preceding glyph is scaled; the tally marks themselves are not scaled.
8. Literal cartouches
Fraction aliases are not interpreted as scaling controls inside literal-cartouche forms. Literal content remains literal.
9. Status
This page describes an experimental proposal and an implementation for people to test. It is not a claim that fractional cartouche scaling is part of the Common Sitelen Pona standard or an established community convention.