Re: Printing and Displaying Dependent Vowels

From: jameskass@att.net
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 14:05:43 EST

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: Printing and Displaying Dependent Vowels"

    John Cowan quoted,

    > Well, it depends on what the equivoque "combining marks" in the title of
    > Section 7.7 means. This is where (p. 187) the remarks about SP and NBSP
    > appear:
    >
    > # Marks as Spacing Characters. By convention, combining marks may be exhibited
    > # in (apparent) isolation by applying them to U+0020 SPACE or to U+00A0 NO-BREAK
    > # SPACE. This approach might be taken, for example, when referring to the
    > # diacritical mark itself as a mark, rather than using it in its normal way
    > # in text.

    Note the use of "may" and "might" in the quoted text rather than "must".

    The above could be interpreted in part as '... combining marks may be exhibited
    in (apparent) isolation by applying them to U+0020 SPACE, or they may not.'
    Such an interpretation might lead people to decide that the approach is
    up to the renderer.

    Semantics aside, if the default display appearance of a combining mark in isolation
    on a certain system is the mark on a dotted circle, then that system should be
    considered conformant when it displays space+mark as dotted_circle+mark.

    An observation, FWIW: on the system here, combiners in Indic scripts get
    the dotted circle, but combining diacritics from the (mostly) Western
    combining diacritics range don't. Space + U+0327 displays a stand-alone
    cedilla here; no dotted circle.

    Best regards,

    James Kass



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