From: Kevin Brown (graphity@adelaide.on.net)
Date: Mon Mar 01 2004 - 22:22:33 EST
"Adam Twardoch" <list.adam@twardoch.com> wrote:
>It doesn't matter whether a ligature is "mandatory" or not. Ligatures should
>not be encoded _at all_, and these encoded in the Alphabetic Presentation
>Forms are an uncomfortable compromise, and exception.
I completely accept that the vast majority of ligatures can be decomposed
into existing encoded characters without any loss of design integrity and
therefore the case for encoding them is weak (and probably non-existent
in the context of the new font technologies such as OpenType)
But can someone explain to me why a ligatures such as ct which CANNOT be
accurately decomposed into individual characters (at least, it can't if
it's designed PROPERLY) shouldn't be encoded in its own right?
Non-decomposability is the special feature of all the ligatures currently
included in Alphabetic Presentation Forms.
How about the German double s/eszett (U+017F) a ligature of long s and s
which cannot be accurately built up from it's components. There was
probably never any doubt that the eszett would be encoded since it
appeared in codepages that predated Unicode but is the encoding of the
eszett merely thought of as an "uncomfortable compromise"?
There must be countless historical facsimile editions printed every year
which use the st and ct ligature extensively. The production of these
items would hugely benefit from having a fixed codepoint for "ct" instead
of it wandering all over the PUA depending on what font you're using.
I'd be happy if someone could point me to the exact Unicode 4 reference
which deals with the issue of non-decomposable ligatures?
Kevin
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