From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Sun Aug 10 2003 - 20:05:21 EDT
Philippe Verdy wrote:
> Spacing diacritics are not "on the edge" of the standard,
The "edge" I was speaking of was the requirement for the exact
display width of a nonspacing diacritic on top of a SPACE to
be specifiable in some determinant way.
> when they
> are already given a full block and handled there as symbols (not as
> letters as suggested in some parts of UAX's), with their own identity
> independant of their actual glyphic representation. I am not
> discussing about the typesetting of these grapheme clusters but
> really about the textual semantics of such combining sequences
> with an invisible base character, affecting all their properties and
> not fully described in the various standard annexes.
In case you didn't notice, I was responding to Peter Kirk's
note -- not to yours.
> Due to the
> huge legacy use of SPACE+diacritics in legacy text, and the
> already normative parts of some standard annexes, it will be hard
> to correct the behavior or change the text of these annexes.
Um, yes.
> And it's where a new better base character than SPACE could
> help solve cleanly the ambiguities.
Um, no. Precisely because it would introduce *another* way
to do what is already specified in the standard. It would, I
predict, lead to nothing but more trouble.
You might, perhaps, find it satisfying, but I can guarantee
that there would then be a future critic complaining about
an unnecessary distinction introduced into the standard. And
then there would be *more* text in different places of the
standard to try to correct and change, in an attempt to
try to make consistent distinctions between the behavior
of <SPACE, NSM> and <ACCENT_ANCHOR, NSM>.
--Ken
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