Re: Rendering Raised FULL STOP between Digits

2013/3/22 Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>:
> The number of conventions that can be applicable to certain punctuation
> characters is truly staggering, and it seems unlikely that Unicode is the
> right place to
> a) discover all of them or
> b) standardize an expression for them.

My intent is certainly not to discover and encode all of them. But
existing characters are well known for having very common distinct
semantics which merit separate encodings. And this includes notably
their use as numeric grouping separators or decimal separators.

Such common semantic modifiers would be eaiser to support than
encoding many new special variants of characters (that won't even be
rendered by most applications, and thus won't be used).

Some examples : the invisible multiplication sign, the invisible
function sign, and even the Latin/Greek mathematical letter-symbols
which were only encoded for encoding style differences which have
occasional but rare semantic differences. For me, adding those
variants was really pseudo-coding, breaking the fundamental encoding
model, and complicatin the task for font creators, renderer designers,
and increasing a lot the size and complexity of collation tables.

Many of these character variants could have been expressed as a base
character and some modifier (whose distinct rendering was only
optional), allowing a much easier integration and better use. Because
of that the UCD is full of many added variants that re alsmost never
used and we have to leave with encoded texts that persist in using
ambguous characters for the most common possible distinctions.
Received on Fri Mar 22 2013 - 06:18:49 CDT