Alternative way to span diacritics over multiple characters

On N4078 "Revised Proposal to enable the use of Combining Triple
Diacritics in Plain Text"...
(http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n4078.pdf)

There was an alternative way to introduce diacritics spanning multiple
letters. It was possible to duplicate COMBINING XXXX diacritics with
CONJOINING XXXX diacritics set with next simple rules:
1) CONJOINING XXXX diacritics yields the whole conjoining diacritics
if it follows the same type COMBINING XXXX or CONJOINING XXXX
diacritics*;
2) in all other cases CONJOINING XXXX diacritics behaves exactly like
COMBINING XXXX one.
The rule #1 looks like modification of COMBINING XXXX behavior, but
legacy compatibility would be preserved.

This would eliminate necessity in closing diacritics and in most cases
necessity in opening diacritics as well, if one uses CONJOINING XXXX
diacritics only. The only case when COMBINING XXXX diacritics would be
really necessary in this scheme is two adjacent, but not conjoined
blocks with the same XXXX diacritics — in this case the only way to
start a new block would be using COMBINING XXXX diacritics. Everything
encoded with COMBINING XXXX diacritics would be kept intact in this
scenario.

E.g. if we have the word ABCDEFGH, where we have (ABC)(DE)F(G)H
distribution of macrons, it could be encoded as:
<character A>
CONJOINING MACRON / COMBINING MACRON
<character B>
CONJOINING MACRON
<character C>
CONJOINING MACRON
<character D>
COMBINING MACRON
<character E>
COMBINING MACRON
<character F>
<character G>
CONJOINING MACRON / COMBINING MACRON
<character H>

Maybe I am wrong, but for me it seems to be more simple for the end-user.

Best regards,
Alex.
Received on Tue Nov 15 2011 - 14:23:52 CST