[Freefont-bugs] Freefont bug: Incorrect character for U+240E SYMBOL FOR SHIFT OUT

[ropers]

Hello GNU/Stevan :),

I think I have found a bug in GNU FreeFont, or specifically in the
FreeMono, FreeSans and FreeSerif fonts:
The character for U+240E SYMBOL FOR SHIFT OUT appears to be incorrect in those.

The two small constituent letters you define for that character are SS
(two esses).
The correct letters should be SO (ess-oh). Compare
<https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2400.pdf>.

While it's true that the actual C0 control codes[1] remain unprintable
in Unicode, getting this right is nonetheless somewhat fundamental,
since these Control Pictures[2] are supposed to be printable direct
equivalents to the corresponding unprintable standard ASCII
characters. So for applications where unprintable ASCII characters
need to be printed, this is a very basic part of the ASCII character
set that your fonts are currently getting wrong.

I am sadly not sufficiently familiar with the somewhat less modern and
quirky FontForge UI to be able to fix this myself in a hurry,
otherwise I would have offered a fix and not just a bug report. In
theory copying and pasting the little O from U+2401 SYMBOL FOR START
OF HEADING to U+240E SYMBOL FOR SHIFT OUT could be enough; actually I
did manage to do that, but I couldn't get things aligned correctly and
I am not enough of a typographer to even know what the correct
alignment would be, so I should probably leave that to someone who
knows what they're doing, so over to you it is.

Related info:
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes>
[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Pictures>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_Out_and_Shift_In_characters>

Thanks for your attention to this.

Thanks and regards,
Ian

(Ian Ropers)