From: Adam Twardoch (list.adam@twardoch.com)
Date: Mon Apr 19 2004 - 10:01:01 EDT
From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
> 'Careful hairsplitting' always takes place when people care about
typography.
How very true.
On one hand, there's people who put a cedilla under "a" when typesetting
Polish, on the other hand, there's people who adjust the vertical position
of hyphens when typesetting all-caps. And there's lot in-between. But it is
important to realize that there _always_ were people who adjusted the hyphen
in all-caps settings. Gutenberg's own typesetting was careful hairsplitting.
This is a very typical and essential dilemma, which is one of the reasons
why there is no easy answer to the glyph vs. character question, or more
precisely, why the "character" definition in Unicode is so, well, vague.
Since the decision on what is a "character" and what is "merely" a "glyph
variant" is made somewhat arbitrarily (albeit in a committee process). There
are far too many exceptions to the rule for Unicode to be consistent and
easy-to-use. But since written human language never was consistent and
easy-to-use, I guess it's something very natural and we will all live with
that.
Adam
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