From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Tue Aug 05 2003 - 17:40:11 EDT
Where did you get the notion that space is not a base character? And
base characters include those that are not control or format
characters. Space is neither one.
The standard specifically states in a number of places that to exhibit
a combining mark in isolation you use a space (or NBSP).
Mark
__________________________________
http://www.macchiato.com
► “Eppur si muove” ◄
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com>
To: "Jim Allan" <jallan@smrtytrek.com>
Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 13:47
Subject: Re: Display of Isolated Nonspacing Marks (was Re: Questions
on ZWNBS...)
> On 05/08/2003 09:42, Jim Allan wrote:
>
> > Peter Kirk posted:
> >
> >> If I want to do this, should I explicitly encode a dotted circle,
or
> >> should I encode nothing and expect the font to generate the
dotted
> >> circle, as it often does?
> >
> >
> > I think that practise of a font or application automaticaly
inserting
> > a dotted circle under an orphaned combining character is dubious
> > compliant with Unicode specifications.
> >
> > ...
> >
> >
> Thanks, Jim, for all this data, but now I am totally confused. Well,
at
> least it seems clear that if I want a dotted circle I should
explicitly
> encode it. But if I don't...
>
> Suppose for example I want to write a sentence like "In this
language
> the diacritic ^ may appear above the letters ...", but instead of ^
I
> want to use a combining character, a regularly positioned centred
above
> the letter diacritic, which does not have a defined spacing variant.
I
> don't want a dotted circle. And I want it to be spaced as here, i.e.
> with one space before the diacritic and one after it. It seems to me
> that at one place in the standard I am told to encode space -
combining
> mark - space, for the combining mark will not combine with the space
> because the space is not a base character; and in another place I am
> implicitly told to encode space - space - combining mark - space,
> because the second space acts as a carrier for the combining mark.
>
> I hope that wanting to display this correctly is not another place
where
> I "have stepped over the boundaries of what is reasonable to expect
> plain text to convey", but that this too can be "grist for the
Unicode
> 5.0 mill to grind very finely" - both quotes from Ken Whistler
earlier
> today. And I think that if this issue is clarified it will also
become
> clear what should be done about string initial holam and alef etc.
>
> Perhaps a simple way ahead would be to define a new character
something
> like COMBINING MARK HOLDER with no glyph, which is defined
specifically
> for this purpose, is a base character and not a format character,
and is
> expected to be just as wide as is necessary to display the combining
> mark. Then we could say that a spacing accent is equivalent
(possibly
> even canonically if made a composition exclusion?) to COMBINING MARK
> HOLDER plus a non-spacing accent, and remove the misleading
> compatibility equivalences to SPACE plus a non-spacing accent.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com
> http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 05 2003 - 18:18:32 EDT