I've tried using 25CC. The problem I'm running into is that the font designer can make marks combine with 25CC just fine but then Microsoft simply ignores the look-up tables that shape these combinations and inserts their own dotted circle (or circles - one per combining mark) anyway.
I don't know what effect using a 'symbol' for a letter has on indexing or searching or line/word breaking because I haven't even gotten so far as to get the display to look right, but I'm guessing there'd also be an advantage to such a character having letter semantics. This need to display marks, well-formed on a generic base, is a really common phenomenon. Countless grammars and other philology and linguistics books/articles/etc. have to represent these types of patterns. I think there needs to be an official solution for placing marks on a generic base that behaves like a letter - something documented so that future font designers can support this and so that the technology providers like Microsoft, ICU, etc. have clear directions on how to support this. If using 25CC really is the answer, then let's publish that solution as part of the Unicode Standard so that all font designers can follow this convention and so that we can have some hope of companies like Microsoft supporting the standard. ________________________________________ From: Otto Stolz [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2010 8:03 AM To: Vincent Setterholm Cc: '[email protected]' Subject: Re: Generic Base Letter Hi Vincent Setterholm, you have been asking: > What I'd like to see is a code point for a generic base character You could try U+25CC DOTTED CIRCLE, though the reference glyph for this cgaracter is larger than the dotted circles used to attach the various combining marks, in their respective reference glyphs. Best wishes, Otto Stolz
