... I think that
LATIN SMALL LETTER TH WITH STRIKETHROUGH does not
meet the guidelines of Annex H of the Principles and Procedures.
I assume that you are referring to http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2652r.pdf; or actually a previous version as your point numbering does not match this version of the document. Bear in mind that this is a WG2 document and not a Unicode document.
Why? First of all, let me say that it does come close to meeting them, but not quite. First off, there is no demonstrated community of users that would instantly recognize this glyph and say, "I know what that is supposed to mean." (H.6 Point 1) Indeed, as Peter Kirk said:
there could well be a dictionary out there somewhere which uses
one of your supposedly equivalent ligatures for the voiced th and
another one for the unvoiced th.
I don't think my words justify the point you are trying to make with them. My hypothetical other dictionary would have its own community of users, largely distinct from the communities of users of the dictionaries using the ligatures under discussion.
Your reasoning is flawed because you seem to assume that a character to be encoded must meet ALL of the criteria in the list in Annex H.6. But the text does not state that; rather this is a list of "Some criteria that strengthen the case for encoding".
That argument not only convinced me against the unification I proposed, it convinces me that this character truly belongs as a private use character. It has no well defined semantics. (H.6 Point 8) and no evidence that it is widespread. (H.6 Point 14).
Anyway, the character "has well defined user community / usage", the users of the dictionary in question. It is not clear that "user" implies those who write the character, or only those who read it. Many historical characters have been accepted for Unicode which are not regularly written, except in copying old texts, but are still regularly read.
The character also has well-defined semantics, indeed they are explicitly defined in the dictionary. The only generally applicable test which the character fails is that of being widespread; but it is actually much more widespread than some characters recently (and correctly) accepted for Unicode. But characters are not expected to meet all these criteria.
I note also the principle in H.9 that "There are glyph changes that cannot be absorbed quietly since the new glyph bears so little relation to the old one that the change exceeds the implied range of glyphic variation." Although this refers primarily to glyph change, I think it can also be applied to synchronic glyph differences which exceed a certain implied range.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
