William Overington wrote:
> Michael Everson raised a very interesting question, which
> caused me to sit and think about it for quite a while.
>
> >At 08:16 +0100 2002-06-24, William Overington wrote:
> >
> >>U+E7C2 HOLLY LEAF (GREEN) SURROUNDED BY FIVE BERRIES (RED)
> >
> >As a "character", will this differ from HOLLY LEAF SURROUNDED BY FIVE
> >BERRIES in its semantics? If not, then you are using character coding
> >for a higher level protocol again.
>
> Well, after some thought as to whether it would differ in its
> semantics or
> whether it would not differ in its semantics, I realized that I had no
> intention that HOLLY LEAF SURROUNDED BY FIVE BERRIES would be
> defined as
> well. I suggested U+E7C2 HOLLY LEAF (GREEN) SURROUNDED BY
> FIVE BERRIES (RED) as a test item, [...]
How is an imaginary test case preferable to the real cases which were
already proposed? These were:
1) Black Ethiopic paragraph separator (U+1368) decorated with little red
dots (suggested by Peter Constable).
2) Arabic letters with black stems and red dots (suggested by me).
Both chromatic combinations are actually used (although not in current
modern usage), and they are representative of the whole issue, because they
map in two different ways to the usual monochrome display:
- In the Ethiopic case (1), the red dots are just decorative, so they should
be dropped in monochrome display.
- In the Arabic case, just the color of the red dots is decorative, but the
dots themselves are part of the letter, so they should be retained also in
monochrome display.
Moreover, Peter's and my examples, by using existing characters, do not
require any "PUA agreement" -- or is it mandatory to use the PUA for just
everything?
_ Marco
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