On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Jukka K. Korpela <[email protected]> wrote:
> I wrote previously that Symbol 0xD6 is a particular glyph for SQUARE ROOT > U+221A and Symbol 0x60 has behavior that does not match Unicode coding > principles (it combines with the _next_ character); it seems that the latter > applies to some implementations only, whereas in others, it is a spacing > character, making its encoding as a Unicode character even more > questionable. The question is rather whether Unicode is able to support the visible functionality of Symbol 0x60. There is U+0305 with the note "connects on left and right", but what does it mean exactly? Does √a̅+̅b̅ look as it should, with all three vincula connected high enough as not to cross the stem of "b" for everyone? And how prescriptive is that note? Is it prescriptive enough that a conforming renderer should render √a̅<sup>2̅</sup>+̅b̅<sup>2̅</sup> as we would like it to be seen? > The Symbol font also contains both sans-serif and serif variants of some > characters like the registered sign “®.” If there is evidence that there are > texts that use both variants, then one might ask whether an addition should > be made to let this distinction be made in plain text. I would say no (in > this rather hypothetical issue), since the presence of a text character in > two font shapes in a single font does not imply that the shapes need to be > encoded as separate Unicode characters. A font may well contain alternative > glyphs for a character, and it should be up to the font implementation and > use to control the use of alternative glyphs if needed. With that I agree. Leo
