Re: No Invisible Character - NBSP at the start of a word

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Nov 29 2004 - 18:16:50 CST

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    John Hudson responded to Jony Rosenne:

    > The idea that the position of such text on a page -- as a marginal
    > note -- somehow demotes
    > it from being text, is particularly nonsensical.

    I think you two (Jony and John) are talking at cross-purposes
    on this particular point.

    The *content* of marginal note can be represented as plain text.
    It is the fact of its being a marginal note, its
    positioning in the margin in textual layout, and its reference
    anchoring to the rest of the text it constitutes a marginal
    annotation for that do *not* consist of plain text, and for
    which we should not expect a plain text representation.

    Peter Kirk summed up the main point of the thread:

    > 2) Allowing floating vowel points (and sometimes accents) with a blank
    > base character. This usually, but not always, happens at the beginning
    > of a word. The mechanism for doing this seems to have been clarified by
    > the UTC: use NBSP as the base character.

    Correct.

    > So can't we leave it that these mechanisms can be used for
    > representation of these forms by those who wish to represent them in
    > plain text, whereas those who want to use other mechanisms are free to
    > do so?

    I agree. That is precisely the intent.

    And Asmus clarified whatever linebreaking issues there may be.
    Those should be dealt with in the context of the revision of
    UAX #14 for Unicode 4.1, which takes into account the changed
    recommendations regarding NBSP versus SPACE as base for
    nonspacing marks.

    --Ken



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