2011/11/18 Ken Whistler <[email protected]>: > On 11/17/2011 11:28 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote: >> >> Could the Unicode text specify that a left half mark, when it is >> followed by a right half-mark on the same line, has to be joined ? And >> which character can we select in a font to mark the intermediate >> characters between them ? > > No. > > This kind of stuff is not plain text. > Mathematicians and musical scorere > long ago got over > the notion that marking of scoped constructs (with beams and ties in music, > and similar kinds of scoping for expressions in math) could be plain text.
This arc in the example is definitely NOT mathematics (even if you have read a version where it was attempted to represent it using a Math TeX notation in this page, an obvious error because it used an angular \widehat and not the appropriate sign). This arc is a true phonetic mark of a contextual elision (the intermediate letter(s) are not to be pronounced, even though they are still written to explicit the phonetically elided word(s) and keep their usual orthography). Exactly similar to other phonetic symbols like the elision tie (an arc adjoininig two words to elide its separating space), or the apostrophe (which replaces completely the elided letters). And obviously a true candidate for plain-text: it provides simultaneouly two readings of the text, one is purely phonetic (and accurate for poems that have an essential and very strong rythmic structure), another is semantic (by the orthography kept). All letters have to be present in some way, even if some of them are marked for the expected phonetic. -- Philippe.
