Re: Raised decimal dot

Karl Pentzlin <karl-pentzlin_at_acssoft.de> writes:

> Am Dienstag, 10. Juli 2012 um 22:28 schrieb Asmus Freytag:
>
> AF> ... A nice argument can be made for encoding a raised decimal
> AF> dot (if it's not representable by any number of other raised dots
> AF> already encoded). Clearly, in the days of lead typography, a
> AF> British style decimal dot would have been something that was a
> AF> distinct piece of lead from a period. ...
>
> Is U+2E33 RAISED DOT suited for this?
> According to the annotation in the standard, the "glyph position [is]
> intermediate between U+002E . and 00B7 ·" (i.e., ¼ cap height).
> Can somebody point to examples?

You can find on‐line accessible examples of this “British style decimal
dot” in sufficiently‐old publications from the International Union of
Crystallography. For instance

http://journals.iucr.org/a/issues/1977/06/00/a14277/a14277.pdf

I believe British practice is to use a mid‐dot rather than ¼ height dot.

The IUCr changed their practice to a lowered dot, perhaps in the late
1980s. The Daily Telegraph newspaper, I think, still uses a mid‐dot
decimal point, in its print form at least (the online version doesn’t
seem to). I continue to use a mid‐dot in formal documents, for instance
those produced using TeX, to do so I define \mathcode`.="0201, and make
sure all my decimals are in TeX’s mathematical environment. Note that,
as in the IUCr document I cited above, not all dotted numbers are proper
decimal fractions, those which are multi‐part numbers such as section
numbers (section 2.10 follows section 2.9) are *not* decimals and are
formatted with lowered dots.

-- 
Ian Clifton ⚗                 Phone: +44 1865 275677
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