Re: Dotted Circle plus Combining Mark as Text

Hello,

am 2013-10-20 um 21:32 Uhr schrieb Asmus Freytag:
> A typical convention is the "show special characters" in many editors.

Or in special fonts, such as CombiChar
<http://eta.ktl.mii.lt/~mask/varia/KoDi-07/Inf_mokslai/Tumasonis/CombiChar.ttf>,
probably by Vladas Tumasonis.

> Incidentally, the dotted circle shown in the Unicode Code charts is
> *not* 25CC, and if I were to implement a "show dotted circle" feature in
> a program I would not use 25CC for this - that character has a standard
> glyph of rather unsuitable metrics for the purpose, never mind that many
> people have co-opted it.

I have written a tutorial (in German) that discusses character entry,
and typographical conventions, for virttually all European languages;
therein, I have to display many diacritikal marks over dotted circles.
I reckon, this problem is not specific to my work.

I have tried two approaches, viz. applying the respective diacritica
to U+25CC, and formatting diacritical marks with the CombiChar font,
respectively. I am not happy with either, but currently apply the
latter, throughout.

As Asmus already has said, U+25CC does not look quite right.
On the other hand, the CombChar font – in order to fulfil its purpose –
necessarily violates D56 of TUS.

So what should a poor author do according to TUS, when he wishes to
discuss diacritical marks and their associated keystrokes?
D52 says about the combining characters:
> These characters are not normally used in isolation unless
> they are being described.
But how can they be described within the framework of Unicode?

Bemused,
   Otto Stolz
Received on Tue Oct 22 2013 - 10:49:54 CDT