From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 14:56:41 EDT
On 11/08/2003 11:45, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>Peter Kirk responded:
>
>
>
>>On 11/08/2003 06:59, Jon Hanna wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>There are only two theoretical problems that I can see here, the first is
>>>that a whitespace character other than space gets converted to space by
>>>attribute value normalisation, and that this changes the meaning of the text
>>>in some way. This could only occur if the combining character were the first
>>>character in a line of text, which is quite a nonsensical construct to begin
>>>with.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Not at all! Imagine a tutorial on a language, which might well list the
>>accents used, in a format like this:
>>
>>` (grave accent) is used with a, e and o, and indicates more open
>>pronunciation
>>^ (circumflex accent) is used with any vowel, and indicates lengthening
>>
>>
>
>We're going round and round in circles here. Those are not lines
>starting with a combining character, but lines starting with
>a *spacing diacritic*.
>
>
>
>>So far so good, but when I get to an accent with no predefined spacing
>>variant, I have a problem!
>>
>>
>
>Either you have the spacing diacritic encoded (as in those instances),
>or the standard indicates that you can represent one by applying the
>nonspacing, *combining* mark to SPACE. In those instances, the line
>still doesn't start with a combining mark -- it starts with a SPACE
>character serving as the base character for the combining mark.
>
>--Ken
>
>
>
>
Thanks for the clarification. I probably misunderstood Jon's intention.
But is there a problem if, for example, an application sees the string
<space, space, combining mark> and regularises it (wrongly!) to <space,
combining mark>?
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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