Michael Everson wrote: > At 12:13 -0700 2004-09-22, James Kass wrote: > >What use is a combining enclosing circle which doesn't combine and > enclose? > > The character is an interchangeable data unit. It combines and > encloses (nicely at least) only if a font designer has drawn a > precomposed glyph for it and its enclosed. And there are a lot of > things that could be enclosed.
For example the invisible letter, you proposed ;-) I think, it would make sense to have a tiny database of composable characters, which are actually used, namely in orthography, and in dictionaries like the Yorouba letters with dot below, the - 35, if I remember well - unencoded Lithuanian composites, the underline below vowels, marking long stressed syllables in German dictionaries, etc. Not every international font needs to comprise any combination which is possible. Such a database would be a very valuable guideline for font designers. Can't it be provided by Unicode, of course, not a as part of the standard? Best wishes Gerd
