> It would be wrong. The soft dot initially did not exist ans appeared
> only as a glyphic feature in some medieval calligraphy for the cursive
> script). Today the presence of this soft-dot is not justified in most
> languages as it carries absolutely no semantic and CAN safely be
> omitted (even if most common non-cursive fonts still display it).
This is subject of an encoding decision, not some objective truth. The
dot above i and j may be considered as a glyphic feature, but it can
also be considered as the addition of a diacritic for whtever reason.
The reason of course was typographical, but from an encoding point of
view this does not necessarily matter. Cf. the use of diaresis in
English words like coöperation, which is also typographical,
nevertheless explicitly encoded. As for the obsolete nature of the
dot: it is part of the tradition of our writing system, whether it is
useful or not.
> But why isn't there a COMBINING HEART ABOVE ?
While using a heart in place of the dot is indeed a comman way of
decorationg the letters, pretty much anything can be and is used for
that reason (logos certainly come into mind).
Á
Received on Sat Feb 02 2013 - 09:03:10 CST
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