On 03/05/2002 04:19:56 PM David Hopwood wrote:
>In mathematics, diacritics can extend across an arbitrary number of
>characters, and I count more than 30 that could reasonably be used in
>that way. A general mechanism is more appropriate.
This proposed use of CGJ would *mostly* affect font rendering
implementations that would have the job of making it look right. But if
you think that font developers are going to implement fonts that can have
diacritics spanning an arbitrary length of base characters, you've got it
wrong. Not only would it be a pain to implement, but typographically it
doesn't make much sense to have to have dot below, a comma above or even a
tilde or circumflex spread out over a span of 15 characters, or even 5
characters.
IMO, the number of diacritics it typographically makes any sense is very
few, and generally it only makes sense to have them span a very short span
of base characters. An overline and underline are the only things that
typographically could reasonably span long sequences of base characters,
and that is not needed for any writing system for linguistic expression;
it is only potentially needed for technical notations, such as math, and
for that there are better solutions.
Rick has convinced me: in the absense of any indication of a real need for
some productive mechanism, let's keep this one simple: somebody please
propose two more double diacritics.
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
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