From: Werner LEMBERG (wl@gnu.org)
Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 01:48:57 EST
> > The UTC should undo the glyph swapping and introduce a new
> > character called U+03F7 GREEK ALTERNATIVE PHI SYMBOL. Then we
> > would have
>
> *If* the UTC agreed that this is a real problem, then I think that a
> variation selector sequence would be much better than a new
> character. In my opinion, and in my understanding of how VS
> combinations are to be assigned.
Fact is that a text written in pre-3.0-Unicode which contains U+03D5
is no longer displayed correctly with current Unicode encoding and
fonts. For mathematics, it can really be confusing. How can VS
combinations help here?
I always thought such a szenario is against the Unicode idea. In this
particular case, designing a different shape to U+03D5 changes the
meaning of that character since in older Unicode versions the
explanatory text doesn't describe which of the two characters is the
curly version and which is the stroked one, thus implementors had to
fall back onto the used glyphs in the Unicode book.
Note that I don't say that it was a bad decision of the UTC to clean
up the situation. I only say that the found solution isn't backwards
compatible.
Werner
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