Le 01/10/2013 12:20, Frédéric Grosshans a écrit :
Le 01/10/2013 02:51, Leo Broukhis a écrit :U+xxxx LATIN SUBSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER Z U+1DE4 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER S, but LATIN SUBSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER Z doesn't exist. Interestingly, the opposite combination, U+209B LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER S U+1DE6 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER Z exists. U+007A : LATIN SMALL LETTER ZHi All,Attached is a part of page 36 of Henry Alford's */The Queen's English: a manual of idiom and usage/ (1888)* [http://archive.org/details/queensenglishman00alfo]Is the way to indicate alternative s/z spellings used there plain text (arguably, if it can be done with a typewriter, it is plain text) or rich text (ignoring the font size of letters s and z)?U+1DE4 : COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER S
The text you scanned would then be in plain text (with s and z inverted)49. How are we to decide between s and z in such words as anatemathiₛᷦe cauteriₛᷦe, criticiₛᷦe, deodoriₛᷦe, dogmatiₛᷦe, fraterniₛᷦe and the rest ? Many of these are derived from Greek
Since that is possible with current unicode while the original orthography of Henry Alford's 1888 book is not, I think this an argument to encode LATIN SUBSCRIPT LATIN Z.
It was proposed among others in 2011 in the proposal n4068/L2 11-208 http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11208-n4068.pdf which was asking for all missing subscript, superscript and small capital latin letters. The German NB supported this proposal in L2/11-416 http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11416-request-on-n4068.pdf and n4085 http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4085.pdf . It was discussed in the january 2012 meeting (see section 9.1, p29 of http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/wg2/docs/n4253.pdf ) and rejected because of a lack of evidence.
On the other hand, similar stacked characters where proposed with Theutonista characters (fig. 1,2, 15, 19, 35, 53, ...) of std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/wg2/docs/n4081.pdf) . Some really looked like a subscript letter with a combining letter, but the discussion in http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/wg2/docs/n4106.pdf shows that they could be analyzᷤed as normal letter + combining letter. However, in your case, the whole point of the orthography is to put z and s an equal footing, and I don't think "zᷤ = U+007A : LATIN SMALL LETTER ZU+1DE4 : COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER S" would be a correct representation.
Frédéric
