From: Kent Karlsson (kentk@md.chalmers.se)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 05:46:04 EDT
> First, is it compliant with Unicode for an Antiqua font to use an s
> glyph for ſ (U+017F)? It makes switching between Antiqua and Fraktur
> fonts possible, and it is arguably the glyph given to the middle s in
> modern Antiqua fonts.
>
> Likewise, ä is printed as a with e above in old texts.* Would it be
> acceptable to make a font with a a^e glyph for ä?
Please don't. "a^e" is <U+0061, U+0364>.
> It's not even changing the meaning of the character in any way.
And ä and æ are "the same", likewise are ö, œ, and ø "the same"
(in some sense, but not in general). Some (in Denmark and Norway,
no-where else) even consider aa and å (and <a, small o above>) to
be "the same" (but not quite, especially when spelling names...).
Still they are definitely different enough to be considered
othographic differences, not font differences. Likewise for
your examples. As for collation, and searches that are advanced
enough to make use of collation keys, the collation tables
*can* be tailored so that these variants, within each "equivalence"
(in some sense) group, have the same level 1 weights (which is
appropriate for scandinavian and german uses), but different
level 2 weights (as is appropriate, since this difference is
(usually) more significant than case distinctions).
/Kent Karlsson
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