Re: Crazy Byzantines

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 19:33:19 EDT


Nick Nicholas asked:

> When Byzantines wrote legal codes, they'd often include Latin terms and
> words in Latin script. Fair enough, since the laws were based on Roman
> codes. But they'd then go and put Greek accentuation on them anyway.
>
> So, down the track, is there any reason
>
> U+0069 U+0313 U+0301
>
> should ever be a problem?
> (Latin idem, with Greek smooth breathing and acute on the i;...)

No. There are no constraints on what characters the general combining
marks could be applied to, in principle.

However, you might have trouble convincing a particular rendering
system (or font) to render <U+0313, U+0301> side-by-side over a
Latin letter, instead of the default stacking. The renderer might
be making assumptions about combinations involving Greek base letters.

> I think I already know this is all perfectly doable; I just wanted to
> doublecheck with some grownups ;-) before we encode something one way
> without coming to regret it when we switch to Unicode later...

I don't see what the encoding alternative would be, anyway. The Unicode
Standard certainly isn't going to clone a bunch of Greek accents for
use on Latin letters, when they are already encoded generically. Having
an extra set wouldn't make any difference for the rendering, and would
just result in confusion of the two sets.

--Ken



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