At 15:08 -0800 2004-02-17, Peter Kirk wrote:
My point here is that if we once start on encoding subscript letters used in specialist scientific notation, there is no easy place to stop.
We have so far encoded what people have been using.
Either we need to accept the principle that subscripts are encodable and set aside space for a whole alphabet of them (and an upper case alphabet and a Greek alphabet as well, plus punctuation); or else we need to say from the start that these things are not plain text and should not be encoded in Unicode.
Or we do what we have done so far. Encode what people have been using.
Well, with a little research I am sure it would not be hard to find examples where people have been using every letter of the Latin and Greek alphabets, upper and lower case, as subscripts in various kinds of scientific notation. The question is, how do we decide how much of this is plain text? Is it something about the kind of text, e.g. is it plain text if it is in a linguistics book but markup if the book is mathematics or physics?
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
