> > An other example that Unicode is NOT about semantics, rather
> > about abstract shapes (not to be confused with glyphs)
> > is U+017F "long s". long-s is clearly a form, a shape of a letter.
> > The semantic name _would_ be "non final s". Both in German Fraktur
> > and Antiqua (and in English for some years before and after 1900)
> > a "non final s" was rendered by some typographers (in some fonts)
> > as round-s, in other fonts as long-s -- final-s being always
> > rendered by
> > round-s.
> >
>
> I hadn't realized this was encoded. It's clearly an alternate graphic form
> with [[s]] semantics, whose use is governed by a higher level syntactic
> protocal. But its compatibility decomposition is marked as U+0073, s, so
> I'm guessing it was in a previous standard that had to be included. Good (I
> need it for a project. ;)
Long-s versus ordinary s is exactly the same distinction as KAF versus
FINAL KAF, TSADI versus FINAL TSADI, etc. in Hebrew, yet those do not
have a compatibility decomposition. Why?
By your argument, Unicode shouldn't be making the distinction at
all---can you explain how you would like me to represent Hebrew
without it?
Otfried
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