From: verdy_p (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Sep 06 2009 - 10:50:20 CDT
"Asmus Freytag" wrote:
> Like Mark pointed out, if it is a standard letter / digit of a script,
> Indic or not, then any more or less accidental (or historical) shape
> similarities/equivalences are usually not obstacles to disunification.
It's true that the type of the character plays an important role for admitting its desunification: if it's a letter
or digit (or a diacritic used in combination with a letter or digit), it merits a disunification if it is used in a
script that is already disunified from another script (note that here, I consider the mathematic notations as a
distinct script from Latin/Greek... even if the symbols are similar: it's something that is needed for the
consistency of the notation, which has more strict composition rules and identification constraints than the regular
scripts used to write humane languages, where some style differences are just considered as variable style which may
change freely without chacing the meaning of the underlying text).
But if it's a punctuation sign (like dandas in Indic scripts), or a symbol (like currencies), if tends to keep its
unification, unless the current character has some wrong properties, notably for: its directionality, or other
layout properties within composition squares for East Asian scripts that may also be rendered vertically, such as
fullwidth or line-break properties, as it would influence the encoding or non-encoding within plain texts of extra
spaces or format controls around this character).
The glyph similarity, or even just its apparent semantic, is not the only factor considered: maintaining the logic
of the script in which the character will be used is an important and useful feature.
So if your Indic character is similar to another character from anothe Indic script (from which it was probably
borrowed), it should be disunified with the existing one if the character is a letter or digit, and it merits its
own encoding, to work best within the rendering rules of the target script: that's why some zero digits were added
later to other Indic scripts that did not have it initially, but also why dandas were not disunified and are shared
by several distinct Indic scripts.
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