The Unicode Consortium Discussion Forum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate

In the Stargate series, the word "Stargate" is sometimes shown as 'STARGÅTE', but with the crossbar of the Å missing. I tried to reproduce this with Unicode. The obvious route seemed to be Λ (039B, Greek uppercase lambda) with ̊ (020A, ring-over). But the result was Λ̊ with (at least on my computer: I use Windows Vista) the ring pushed to the right. This happens in various Greek letters combined with ring-over: ϵ̊ο̊ε̊Α̊ω̊

But on my computer with Roman letters followed by the ring-over character, the ring sits properly on top, in my computer's Ariel font: Åg̊e̊æ̊à̊åf̊S̊ , but not in the font which this forum uses on my computer when I am editing a message, but OK when the finished message is displayed.

In that Roman example, all the characters have the ring on top in my computer's Ariel font.

Combining marks require support in the font for correct rendering. Many fonts simply design the glyph for the ring as overhanging to the left by a fixed amount. This works for many characters (often narrow ones) but leads to right shift over wide characters.

For known combinations, the font has data for correct placements.

If you are designing a poster, etc. you can use software that supports character spacing. If you reduce the spacing, the ring may shift left to where you want it. This wouldn't work in e-mail.