It's intriguing to think of an encoding for math symbols that breaks
them down into sequences of pieces. For example, NOT EQUAL could be
EQUAL followed by a slash combining mark.
Maybe some day a "cleanicode" will be developed that handles this and
related characters in a consistent, uniform way. Until then (if that
ever happens), we live in a world where computer systems have evolved
differently and compatibility with existing math character repertoires
has led to encoding composed symbols. While compatibility decompositions
might appear to be a good idea to add at this point, they'd introduce
complexity that doesn't seem warranted for the relatively few symbols
involved.
Thanks
Murray
-----Original Message-----
From: Marco Cimarosti [mailto:marco.cimarosti@essetre.it]
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 3:33 AM
To: 'unicode@unicode.org'
Subject: More trivia: Misc. Math. Symbols-B and decomposition
I was peeping in the "Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B" block
proposed
for Unicode 3.2
(http://www.unicode.org/charts/draftunicode32/U32-2980.pdf),
when I noticed that many of those character could have been composed
using
an existing base character and an existing non spacing mark.
For instance:
- 29B1..29B4 (empty sets) could be composed using various diacritics
(0305,
030A, 20D6, 20D7);
- 29B5..29C3 (circle symbols) could be composed using 20DD (COMBINING
ENCLOSING CIRCLE)
- 29C4..29C8 (square symbols) could be composed using 20DE (COMBINING
ENCLOSING SQUARE)
- 29CC (triangle symbols) could be composed using 20E4 (a new combining
encoding triangle, also in 3.2:
http://www.unicode.org/charts/draftunicode32/U32-20D0.pdf)
But they don't have any compatibility decomposition. And this is also
true
for all existing symbols that could be composed with diacritics. What is
the
rationale for this choice?
_ Marco
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