Invisible Distinctions

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2006 - 16:37:50 CDT

  • Next message: Asmus Freytag: "Re: Invisible Distinctions"

    Does anyone know of invisible encoding distinctions (*not* canonically
    equivalent) actually being deliberately used by significant groups of users?
    I can think of a few possibilities:

    (1) <U+17D2 KHMER SIGN COENG, U+178A KHMER LETTER DA> v. <U+17D2, U+178F
    KHMER LETTER TA>. It is recommended that the choice be made according to
    pronunciation, but this would be unetymological in a few words.

    (2) Use of <U+034F COMBINING GRAPHEME JOINER> (CGJ) to distinguish digraphs
    from accidental sequences in sorting. The usual example given is Slovak
    'ch'; Welsh 'ng' could also become a significant possibility. The two cases
    (Hebrew and German) where it is intended to affect the rendering are not
    relevant to my question.

    However, I have no evidence of whether these distinctions are actually being
    made by significant number of users. I can well imagine CGJ only being used
    on keywords, and then only when the sorting process otherwise yields the
    wrong order for the data set in actual use.

    Richard.



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