From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 14:45:11 EDT
Peter Kirk responded:
> On 11/08/2003 06:59, Jon Hanna wrote:
>
> >There are only two theoretical problems that I can see here, the first is
> >that a whitespace character other than space gets converted to space by
> >attribute value normalisation, and that this changes the meaning of the text
> >in some way. This could only occur if the combining character were the first
> >character in a line of text, which is quite a nonsensical construct to begin
> >with.
> >
> >
> Not at all! Imagine a tutorial on a language, which might well list the
> accents used, in a format like this:
>
> ` (grave accent) is used with a, e and o, and indicates more open
> pronunciation
> ^ (circumflex accent) is used with any vowel, and indicates lengthening
We're going round and round in circles here. Those are not lines
starting with a combining character, but lines starting with
a *spacing diacritic*.
>
> So far so good, but when I get to an accent with no predefined spacing
> variant, I have a problem!
Either you have the spacing diacritic encoded (as in those instances),
or the standard indicates that you can represent one by applying the
nonspacing, *combining* mark to SPACE. In those instances, the line
still doesn't start with a combining mark -- it starts with a SPACE
character serving as the base character for the combining mark.
--Ken
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