On 8/16/2012 8:55 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
2012-08-16 18:31, Ian Clifton wrote:
Having just been to Norway, and wanting to email my friends all about
it, I came across a curiosity: neither of the combining characters
U+0337, U+0338 seem to work in usually‐reliable Emacs, and indeed
U+00F8 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE doesn’t seem to have a
decomposed form, according to UnicodeData.txt. I’m sure this can’t be an
oversight?
It isn’t an oversight but an intentional decision.
The letter “ø” (historically originating from a ligature of “o” and
“e”) could have been analyzed as consisting of the letter “o” and a
diacritic mark. Instead, it was coded as an “atomic” character that is
not decomposable in any way.
This may sound illogical, as another Scandinavian letter, “ö” (also
originating from a ligature of “o” and “e”, the latter in small size
above the “o”) is encoded as canonically decomposable.
Similarly, the letters “ł” and “đ” were encoded as “atomic.” In a
sense, it’s just the way it is, but I think I can see the reasoning
behind this. Although strokes across letters are comparable to
diacritic marks in a sense, and surely historically, the also differ
from them in essential ways. They cross over letters instead of just
sitting above, below, or otherwise near a base letters. perhaps more
importantly, they differ in placement, width, and angle: compare e.g.
“ø”, “ł”, and “đ” with each other. If the stroke were defined as a
diacritic, its identity would be rather vague.
Yucca
you beat me to it. :)
I like the "rather vague" identity.
A./
PS: Whether letters are used in Scandinavia or not isn't or wasn't a
deciding factor, although I'm sure the relevant national delegations may
well have had minority opinions on that matter.
