From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2004 - 05:11:01 EST
"Michael Everson" wrote at 2004-02-18 02:39:
> Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> > Alternatively, let's leave all subscripting to markup.
>
> It is too late for that, Ken. Sorry. Indo-Europeanists have
> requirements just as real as Uralicists did. And having some
> subscripts available but not the rest isn't acceptable. Why would it
> be?
Why couldn't there exist a combining subscript modifier, added after a base
character, to make it look like a subscript, and that could be given a maximum
combining class 255?
This would greatly limit the abuse of this character to write a whole sequence
into subscripts when it should be coded more simply with markup in rich-text
formats.
So for example to encode the proposed "subscript lowercase x", we would code
<LATIN SMALL LETTER X> then <COMBINING SUBSCRIPT MODIFIER>
The combining modifier would normally create a conjunct or a ligature with its
base grapheme cluster to modify it in order to make it look like a subscript;
this is unlike the simple combining diacritics that MAY be simply overwriting
the base character, but most often need to create a special ligature to handle a
correct placement, including the already existing possibility to alter/resize
the base character in order to place the diacritic above or under it. So that's
something which can be handled in fonts.
If we need a representative glyph for the lowerscript modifier, it could be a
smaller dotted circle...
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