Berthold K.P. Horn wrote:
>
> rf@cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>
> > Berthold K.P. Horn <bkph@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
> > >(2) The UNICODE Consortium has decided that one should not construct
> > >accented/composites characters by over-printing. Such characters
> > >must each have their own code.
>
> > This isn't _strictly_ true: recall that there's at least one page of
> > combining accents (I can't remember which page it is, and my copy of
> > ISO 10646-1 has sprouted some *very* sturdy little legs and walked away).
>
> Well, the introductory verbage says that they should not be used.
> I believe they now consider the `combining accents' a mistake.
> But since nothing can ever be removed from UNICODE once it is in
> there, the `non spacing' diacritics will stay. Pretty much the
> same reason there are still math symbols in there, even though
> current UNICODE thinking appears to be that this was a mistake also
> (and indicated by their never passing any proposal to make the math
> character representation more complete and hence actually useful).
>
> Maybe someone who actually knows something about this (like bnb :-)
> could comment on this...
From someone who actually knows something about this, quite the
contrary.
The combining accents are not a mistake. The pre-composed characters
exist for historical and political reasons. Without pre-composed
characters, Unicode would be a much smaller character set, and just as
complete.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
mleisher@crl.nmsu.edu
Mark Leisher "A designer knows he has achieved perfection
Computing Research Lab not when there is nothing left to add, but
New Mexico State University when there is nothing left to take away."
Box 30001, Dept. 3CRL -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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