Re: On the lack of a SQUARE TB glyph

On 9/26/2019 4:21 AM, Fred Brennan via Unicode wrote:
> There is a clear demand for a SQUARE TB. In the font SMotoya Sinkai W55 W3,
> which is ©2008 株式会社 モトヤ, the glyph is unencoded and accessed via the
> Discretionary Ligatures (`dlig`) OpenType feature. It has name `T_B.dlig`.

Aye, there's the rub. Despite the subject of this thread, the problem is
not the lack of a "glyph". This and many other particular squared forms
may exist in Japanese fonts. The question then devolves to whether there
is a *character* encoding issue here. What data representation and
interchange issue is being raised here that requires an atomic character
encoding, when the *presentation* issue can just be handled with
OpenType features and already existing characters?

If the concern is about future-proofing the standard, then clearly,
instead of indefinitely extending various groups of squared combinations
for SI values, other technical values, etc., etc., the generative and
scaleable way forward is simply to let Japanese squared sequence
coinages be handled with OpenType features, rather than insisting that
each one come back to the UTC for one-by-one character encoding.

Note that there is a certain, systemic similarity here to the problem of
extensibility of emoji, where encoding of multiple flags, of multiple
skin tones, or of multiple gender representations, etc., is handled more
generally by specifying how fonts need to map specified sequences into
single glyphs, rather than by insisting that every meaningful
combination end up encoded as an atomic character.

--Ken
Received on Thu Sep 26 2019 - 14:57:08 CDT