Re: U+0140

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2004 - 16:25:04 EST

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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin" <antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt>
    To: <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 7:02 PM
    Subject: Re: U+0140

    > On 2004.03.27, 11:12, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
    >
    > >>> This becomes evident when composing with extra-space between
    > >>> letters: there is no "tie" between the first "L" and the dot.
    > >
    > > Interesting comment, because I had always thought that this
    > > middle-dot was a modifier of the previous L,
    >
    > That was apparently the whole idea behind the first implementation of
    > this chararcter. (Where does it come from? MacWestern? No ISO:8859
    > covers it, AFAIK.)
    >
    > > and I didn't think about syllabic hyphenation.
    >
    > Your're not supposed to. But people creating encoding should have done
    > more than just grab glyphs from assorted text. (Too bad that the few
    > people who can do it seriously are not rewarded for it...)
    >
    > >>> Using this character for Catalan texts additionally causes
    > >>> hyphenation problems.
    > >
    > > So what would be the "hyphenation problems"?
    >
    > Something happends when the "L·L" coincides with a soft line end. I'm
    > no expert in Catalan typesetting but IIRC the dot becomes a hyphen,
    > while regular "LL"s cannot be broken.
    >
    > I could ask about this in Catalonia, as also many of us, bvut it falls
    > outside the scope of Unicode.
    >
    > > Also what is the normal placement of the middle-dot after a
    > > uppercase L letter, doesn't it kern into the space above the
    > > horizontal bar?
    >
    > Kerning is kerning, right. What is the normal placement of a "V" after
    > an "A", or a "º" after a "."?... Thsey are separate characters, and
    > kerning is not a matter for Unicode.
    >
    > > If I understand what you say here, that it's not a diacritic that
    > > modifies that first L,
    >
    > Yes, it is not.
    >
    > > so that this middle-dot is effectively a orthographic hyphen similar
    > > in essence to other orthographic hyphens that are used to create
    > > compound words, or to mark the inversion of the verb and pronominal
    > > subject
    >
    > More or less, yes. But while this kind of hyphens and apostrophes
    > separate two "words", the Catalan middle do between two "L"s does not.
    >
    > > But in that case, is that middle-dot to be considered as a regular
    > > punctuation mark in Catalan?
    >
    > More like a letter, from a typography point of view.

    Not really, if it can be freely changed into a regular hyphen at line breaks;
    now your comments interestingly makes me think about a explicit and visible
    syllable break.

    Not not too far from the hyphen used between two parts of
    a compound word (which interestingly tends to disappear in modern
    orthographs of lots of compound words, such as "presse-papier" in French
    where the hyphen is needed between what is originately a verb and a nound
    to build a single noun, and that some write now as a single word
    "pressepapier" as it simplifies the rule for plural marks, or for neologisms
    like "kilo-octet" more often written now "kilooctet" even though it causes
    problems for the separate pronunciation of the double vowel "oo").
    I suppose that in Catalan, one could use the middle dot to mark this
    syllable break in words like "kilo.octet".

    But the question of word-breaks is highly context-sensitive and language-
    dependant. It's hard to tell from a hyphen such as the one in the previous
    line, if it's a word-break hyphen or a compound-word composing hyphen.
    - Just look at this paragraph and you'll see several hyphens whose meaning
    differs even in English here. ;-)



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