Peter Kirk <peterkirk at qaya dot org> wrote: > But now it seems that WG2, and apparently also the UTC, has decided to > accept an encoding using CGJ as a pseudo-variation selector applied to > a combining mark (although positioned before it instead of after it), > despite it having all of the effects of confusing normalisation which > Asmus describes so clearly above - which are even worse in this case > because of canonical equivalences. (In practice the new combination > for trÃma may be used very rarely in combination with other combining > marks, but that argument didn't wash before.) The encoding using CGJ > also seems to be overloading this character which is intended for > something quite different.
Read N2819 again: "The sequences <a, Â> and <a, CGJ, Â> are not canonically equivalent. [T]his means that the distinction will not be normalized away on conversion in and out of bibliographic systems." CGJ + COMBINING DIAERESIS is a hack, but then again the need to draw a distinction between the exact same combining mark used for two different phonetic purposes is a bit of a hack too. The alternative proposed by DIN, creating a new COMBINING UMLAUT character, would have caused *unprecedented and catastrophic* equivalence and normalization problems. > It seems to me that the UTC should bite the bullet and accept that > there is a need for variation sequences for combining marks, and > either adjust the definitions of existing variation selectors or > encode new specialised variation selectors for them. The adjusted or > new variation selectors can then be used for Hebrew as well as for > German - see my posting on this subject to the Hebrew list. "When 256 variation selectors just won't do, invent another." (with apologies to Ken Whistler) -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
