The question is neither dumb or naïve, However, it has been addressed and answered several times in various discussions. There might be different views on this in the Unicode community, so I’ll label the following as mine only,
Unicode has included precomposed characters such as “ä” and “é” for compatibility, since they existed in earlier character codes. If Unicode were designed today and with no regard to earlier codes, it would have just base characters and combining marks. But due to the existence and widespread use of codes with precomposed characters, they were included into Unicode and defined as distinct, but “compatibility equivalent” to combinations of base characters and combining marks. This means that you are allowed to, but not required to, or even encouraged to make a distinction between, say, the single character “é” and the sequence of “e” followed by a combining acute accent. Combining characters provide for a general mechanism of adding combining marks on any characters. You can take this to extremes and absurdity, creating a character with dozens or zillions of marks above and below it, but this does not prevent meaningful use of combining characters. Yucca, https://jkorpela.fi su 14.12.2025 klo 18.36 Phil Smith III via Unicode ([email protected]) kirjoitti: > This may be dumb/hopelessly naïve but here goes! > > > > My observations/inferences/suppositions re combining characters: > > - They were originally implemented as a way to reduce the total number > of characters > - We’re well past any likely original vision of the number of > characters/scripts anyway, so that “savings” is kinda meaningless > - Combiners are a pain overall (normalization!) > - Barring Earth joining the Galactic Federation and Unicode deciding > to include all twelve billion alien languages, the current scheme will > suffice forever (yeah, yeah, I know, “never say forever”, but…this feels > like IPv6 addresses, “there are just SO many…”) > > > > Ergo, I posit that there should never be a need for any NEW combiners. > > > Is there any sort of official or unofficial policy to that end? Inquiring > minds and all that… > > > > Thanks, > > ...phsiii >
