Re: Printing and Displaying Dependent Vowels

From: John Cowan (cowan@ccil.org)
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 09:56:13 EST

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: Printing and Displaying Dependent Vowels"

    Peter Kirk scripsit:

    > Using NBSP rather than SPACE has several advantages, and has long been
    > specified in Unicode, although not widely implemented. It is less likely
    > to occur accidentally. But it has disadvantages, especially that it will
    > always be a spacing character, whereas for display of isolated Indic
    > vowels no extra spacing is required.

    You don't actually say so, but you give me the impression that you think
    NBSP is a fixed-width space. It isn't; it can assume any width greater
    than zero, just as SPACE can; in particular, when used before a NSM, I
    would expect it to have the same width as the NSM.

    > I would like to repeat my earlier proposal for a new character ISOLATED
    > COMBINING MARK BASE. This character would have no glyph, and the general
    > properties of a letter. Its spacing would be just as much as required
    > for proper display of the combining mark - which would be zero for
    > combining marks which have their own width.

    Except for not being letters, SP and NBSP have, or ought to have,
    exactly this behavior.

    -- 
    "Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
    


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