On 11/08/2003 11:45, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
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
Thanks for the clarification. I probably misunderstood Jon's intention.
But is there a problem if, for example, an application sees the string
<space, space, combining mark> and regularises it (wrongly!) to <space,
combining mark>?
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
