...Actually, in my opinion based on experience with problem combinations in Hebrew and Arabic, the problem is not so much with the reordering rules as with the way that some canonical decompositions and combining classes have been inappropriately defined, and with the stability policy which decrees that even the most obvious mistakes cannot be corrected.
If there is a problem with this then it goes deeper than just NFC, but to the rules of how combining characters can or cannot be reordered, and the meaning that the resulting strings have. If there is a problem with that then the problem lies with those rules, rather than NFC which uses them.
The problem is that the definitions in the Unicode Standard conflict with the stability policy. For example, from p.83 of TUS 4.0:
D46 Combining class: A numeric value given to each combining Unicode character that
determines with which other combining characters it typographically interacts.
• See Section 4.3, Combining Classes—Normative, for information about the combining
classes for Unicode characters.
Characters have the same class if they interact typographically, and different classes if they
do not.
This is simply untrue and so needs to be changed. I have well documented examples from Hebrew and from Arabic of combining characters which do not have the same combining class but do interact typographically. (Unless D46 is read as a counter-intuitive definition of "typographically interacts".) The obvious way of correcting this error, to adjust the combining classes, is ruled out by the stability policy. So the text of the standard, which can be changed in a new version, needs to be changed to read something like:
Characters have the same class if according to the best information available in 2001 (?) they were thought to interact typographically, and different classes if they were thought not to.
Or else simply state that combining classes are assigned arbitrarily - as also needs to happen with Unicode character names which similarly contain uncorrectable errors.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
