From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Tue Feb 17 2004 - 19:56:37 EST
On 17/02/2004 15:49, D. Starner wrote:
>>My point is that characters such as 02B0, 02B2, and 02E0 are already used in the
>>same fashion as the newly proposed Indo-European characters. Therefore, it's
>>not clear to me why there should be any objection to the latter.
>>
>>
>
>Because any mathematical alphanumberic character can appear superscripted
>in mathematics; does that mean that we need to create superscripted characters
>for all of them? If these are part of a small, closed set, like U+02B0, then
>it's appropriate to encode them; but if just any character can appear
>superscripted or subscripted, then it goes outside Unicode, and needs to be
>dealt with in markup.
>
>
Unicode started with a small and apparently closed set of superscript
Latin letters. This set has now grown to include all or almost all of
the basic Latin alphabet, as well as a good number of capital letters,
Greek letters and non-basic Latin letters, many of them in the Phonetic
Extensions block. The way in which these have been added piecemeal means
that they are non-contiguous and confusing. My point in intervening on
this topic is to suggest that more forethought is given to subscript
letters, by allocating a contiguous block into which they can all be
fitted so that they can all be used without having to be justified
individually. So I would object to the proposal N2705 because it
proposed encoding just four such subscript letters in a space which is
not large enough for even one whole alphabet.
According to the Roadmap, the Phonetic Extensions block can already be
extended to cover 1D80-1DBF. I would suggest reserving this extension
block for subscript letters, which gives space for upper and lower case
subscript basic Latin alphabets and some extra characters. There is
still a question of where subscript Greek letters might go; there is
just space for a lower case Greek alphabet in the Greek and Coptic
block, but this is not contiguous.
Alternatively, let's leave all subscripting to markup.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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