Ar 01:54 -0700 1999-08-28, scr�obh Dan:
>And if you work with linguistics, an � cannot be decomposed when you
>work with Swedish, as it is a single letter. The dots above are not an
>accent or diacritic mark. So here is a case where you need to
>be able to represent what looks like the same glyph "an a with
>two dots above", both as one character and as an a with combining dots.
Uh, you mean that it can't be displayed as a�, right? Of course the Swedish
letter can be decomposed in the text stream to a + combining diaeresis. If
you want to display a� you can either use a spacing diaeresis or a space +
combining diaeresis for the latter.
>I could say tha same, but for different reasons.
>
>For example:
>- having non spacing combining characters after instead of
>before base character.
I understood that it's much better to have them after.
>- not accepting that some glyphs that look like it is a combined
>character, is not a combined character but instead a character
>in itself and should have a code value of itself.
Apart from dotless j I can't think of any examples of this. Swedish � does
not differ in any way from French (or indeed Swedish) �, except in the
minds of Swedes. By the same token, Welsh ll does not differ in any way
from English ll, except the Welsh sort it differently. It's a string of
characters considered as one.
The reason _I_ like non-decomposed characters is that I make fonts and
adequate support for smart fonts for font designers is only very very
incipient. There's a lot of promise in ATSUI, for instance, but I have yet
to be able to make use of it in any practical way.
-- Michael Everson * Everson Gunn Teoranta * http://www.indigo.ie/egt 15 Port Chaeimhghein �ochtarach; Baile �tha Cliath 2; �ire/Ireland Guth�n: +353 1 478 2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478 2597 (by arrangement) 27 P�irc an Fh�ithlinn; Baile an Bh�thair; Co. �tha Cliath; �ire
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