Ted Hopp scripsit: > Besides, what's all this that I keep reading about Unicode encodes > characters, not glyphs? From Chapter 1: "[T]he standard defines how > characters are interpreted, not how glyphs are rendered." The "code what you > see" approach, while probably the reality of Unicode, seems somewhat > contrary to this statement of principle.
Some characters are more glyphy than others, to be sure, and combining marks are explicitly said to be shape-based. But after all, we don't demand that in encoding English, final silent e be given a different code from that of any other e, so why should silent vs. pronounced shva be encoded separately? > > So with Unicode, there is no way to separate even vowels and consonants, No more is it possible in any encoding when writing English: is "y" a vowel or a consonant? Depends. OTOH, we cannot lay down an absolute law. Certain Mongolian letters are quite indistinguishable visually in some of their contextual forms (Mongolian is a cursive script like Arabic), but are still encoded separately in Unicode. There is tension between the various encoding principles in Unicode, and designing an encoding for any script is a balancing act. -- John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan "You cannot enter here. Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!" --Gandalf
