From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > In addition, superscripts and subscripts for palatalization, velarization, > aspiration, etc., already exist in the Unicode IPA block. It seems to me that > the function of such glyphs is similar to that of a diacritic in that it > modifies the meaning of the base glyph. > > How is the term "plain text" being used here? Is the distinction one between > natural language and scientific notation?
My best response about it would be that "plain-text" does not require to restrict to a natural language. After all decimal digits are not in the natural language, it's a notational symbol that we do recognize as a needed character (same thing for currency symbols, and even for many unspoken punctuations...) We don't need to exclude symbols or notations from Unicode, which already defines a full "S" category for them (as well as "N" for numeric symbols). So why do you seem to suggest that IPA should not be there and considered as "plain-text"? Remember that even the scripts for natural languages are themselves conventional notations. This is just enough to justify that other notations be included in plain-text, as long as we can easily determine a distinctive "character" identity in the candidate symbol, and a distinctive representative glyph or text-control function, without implying necessarily a required layout or appearance.
