I am considering to file in a proposal for two new characters, to be used in
Italian ordinal numbers abbreviations.
Before I do this, I would like to read some opinions.
<BACKGROUND>
In Italian, ordinal numbers are grammatically adjectives. As all adjectives,
they take the gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) of
the noun they qualify.
So, in an expression like "the third Italian(s)", the adjective "third" can
take up to four different forms according to the number and gender of the
noun:
f.s.: "la terza italiana" = "the third Italian woman"
m.s.: "il terzo italiano" = "the third Italian (man)"
f.p.: "le terze italiane" = "the third Italian women"
m.p.: "i terzi italiani" = "the third Italian men / the third
Italians"
One way to abbreviate ordinal numbers is to write them in digits, adding an
"ordinal indicator" on their right side. An ordinal indicator is the
superscript (and, sometimes, underlined) version of the last letter of the
word.
Unicode only has the ordinal indicators for the singular forms:
ª U+00AA "FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR"
º U+00BA "MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR"
f.s.: "la 3ª italiana" = "the 3rd Italian woman" ("ª" = U+00AA
FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR)
m.s.: "il 3º italiano" = "the 3rd Italian man" ("º" = U+00BA
MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR)
</BACKGROUND>
Unicode lacks the ordinal indicators for the plural forms, that should look
like a superscript "e" and "i".
I can see are at least 4 approaches to solve this problem, 3 of which
require to file in a proposal:
1) Apply the "superscript" font property to ordinary "e" and "i".
(Contra: solution cannot be used in plain text)
2) Propose two new characters in the Letterlike Symbols block (tentatively:
*U+213B "(ITALIAN) FEMININE PLURAL ORDINAL INDICATOR" and *U+213C "(ITALIAN)
MASCULINE PLURAL ORDINAL INDICATOR").
3) Propose two new characters in the Superscripts and Subscripts block
(tentatively: *U+2090 and *U+2091, same names as in point 2).
4) Unify the masculine indicator with Unicode 3.2's U+2071 "SUPERSCRIPT
LATIN SMALL LETTER I" and only propose the feminine indicator (tentatively:
*U+2072 "SUPERSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER E").
(Contra: the U+2071, used as a math symbol, should be coherent with U+207F
"SUPERSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER N" but, used as an ordinal indicator, should
be coherent with U+00AA and U+00BA, hence a possible problems for fonts).
TIA.
_ Marco
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