From: Christopher John Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Wed Dec 17 2003 - 20:44:35 EST
> However, could there be an encoding for:
> <LATIN CAPITAL LETTER DOTLESS J>
> with a lowercase mapping to the new:
> <LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J>
> Of course the former would look exactly the same as the
> ASCII uppercase J, except that it would have a distinct
> case mapping. This would avoid, for j/J the nightmare
> of dotless-i/dotted-i/I...
It introduces another difficulty though - If there are languages using a "LATIN
SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J" and words written in those languages are sometimes
capitalised - then presumably there is already data where "LATIN CAPITAL
LETTER J" has already been used as the upper case for "LATIN SMALL LETTER
DOTLESS J" introducing a separate
A purist might argue that if there are no places where a using "LATIN CAPITAL
LETTER DOTLESS J" instead of "LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J" makes a lexical
difference then one is simply a glyph variant of the other. If that is so then
there is no need for two characters one form could be handled by higher level
mark-up and rendered using a different glyph.
I think Latin has too long been considered a "simple script" - if one takes
into account the number of languages written in Latin script and all the
additions modifications used to do this, Latin is a "complex script". In view
of this before adding new Latin characters it might be a good idea to first
consider the kind of solutions used for scripts that have always been
considered "complex".
- Chris
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