I don't agree that ancient history should necessarily determine this. It's a bit like the distinction between U and V in English, in fact closely analogous phonetically. As originally used in English they were one character. But I don't think that would justify an argument that they should now be encoded as one character and distinguished only by context or markup. In current usage they are clearly distinct, and that should be decisive.Well, that was precisely the question. Are we talking about a mere preference of visual effect or an actual difference in (original) text--that is, an intended semantic differentiation?
K
Unfortunately it is not quite so clear for Hebrew as usage varies. But the fact that many do not make the distinction is not an argument that others who prefer to make the distinction should not be allowed to. K, I don't think you French Canadians would be very happy if accented upper case vowels were removed from Unicode because they are not used in France. (I must find some way to divide you from the real French :-) )
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
