... Could there be another codepoint assigned that hasPhilippe, this sounds like an excellent suggestion, at least in general terms. There is a missing function here, which has been provided (since Unicode 1.0) by overloading the characters space and NBSP with an inappropriate second function. Of course we can't make existing practice illegal, but we can recommend that in future versions of the standard your new ZERO WIDTH SYMBOL character should be used for display of isolated diacritics where there is no separate spacing form. We can also suggest that the width of the combination should be that of the diacritic only.
these properties:
20CF;ZERO WIDTH SYMBOL;Sk;0;ON;<compat> 0020;;;;N;;;;;
i.e. being considered symbolic, not a whitespace, with combining class 0 (not combining), and used as an explicit base for a isolated spacing diacritic to never show with a dotted circle? (note U+20CF is just a suggestion, as it fits at end of the symbolic block used for currency symbols, just before the "extended" combining characters block, and because the U+02XX block where other "Sk" spacing diacritics are defined is full).
The compatibility decomposition to a space is to make it in sync with other compatibly decomposable spacing diacritics.
The new character would allow to represent diacritics that currently don't have a spacing counterpart, and use them as if they were letter like. Let's look at a similar diacritic which currently has an existing "precombined" spacing version:
00B4;ACUTE ACCENT;Sk;0;ON;<compat> 0020 0301;;;;N;SPACING ACUTE;;;;
But I'm not sure that ZERO WIDTH SYMBOL is the best name, unless you are suggesting other uses in which it really has zero width. Well, it might have in a case like line initial holam which shifts on to a following silent alef, but that is a rather special case.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
