Peter Kirk responded: > On 11/08/2003 06:59, Jon Hanna wrote: > > >There are only two theoretical problems that I can see here, the first is > >that a whitespace character other than space gets converted to space by > >attribute value normalisation, and that this changes the meaning of the text > >in some way. This could only occur if the combining character were the first > >character in a line of text, which is quite a nonsensical construct to begin > >with. > > > > > Not at all! Imagine a tutorial on a language, which might well list the > accents used, in a format like this: > > ` (grave accent) is used with a, e and o, and indicates more open > pronunciation > ^ (circumflex accent) is used with any vowel, and indicates lengthening
We're going round and round in circles here. Those are not lines starting with a combining character, but lines starting with a *spacing diacritic*. > > So far so good, but when I get to an accent with no predefined spacing > variant, I have a problem! Either you have the spacing diacritic encoded (as in those instances), or the standard indicates that you can represent one by applying the nonspacing, *combining* mark to SPACE. In those instances, the line still doesn't start with a combining mark -- it starts with a SPACE character serving as the base character for the combining mark. --Ken
