Reynolds, Gregg wrote:
> Clear in what way? Alternate forms of the same abstract shape, or alternate
> shapes altogether? Dotless ya is not "representative" of alef maqsura but
> one of two representations.
Just so in U+0123: the g with cedilla (below) can be, and in Latvian
generally is, drawn as g with acute (above).
> no such note on U+0649. And I'm not sure exactly what to make on the U+0123
> note; 3 variants on the same shape (metafont?) or 3 distinct abstract
> shapes.
I don't know, because I don't know how to make hard distinctions between
abstract and concrete shapes. For CJK this problem is fairly well
understood (even if lots of people are unhappy with particular renderings),
but for Latin it's not so clear. Do you consider old-style digits
to be the same abstract shape as standard digits, for example?
Presumably so, and yet it is not a mere difference of font, because
many fonts have both. What about typeset "a" vs. hand-printed "a",
or Times-style "g" vs. Helvetica-style "g"?
> Ok, I can live with that. I wonder if there isn't some way to add, rather
> than change. Effectively this would mean an errata sheet. I.e., in
> addition to the official, cast in iron name (maksura), each character has a
> (usually null) alias property which could be used for corrected names.
There is indeed: the so-called "ISO 10646 comment" field in
UnicodeData, which tells us such things as "Greenlandic" for
LATIN SMALL LETTER KRA, and "gha" for LATIN LETTERs OI.
> As
> for inferring properties from names, I would think that if we can't do that
> it's a sign that we have the wrong abstractions; but I suppose it's
> something we have to live with in most cases.
Yes. As has been posted recently, the names are the product of a
political process often based on insufficient information, done
piecemeal by people using different conventions. Just changing *one*
of the names (LATIN LIGATURE AE -> LATIN LETTER AE) gave so much
grief that all further changes have been banned.
-- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge / Politzer
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