Re: Armenian Mijaket (Armenian colon)

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

On 12/5/2017 1:32 PM, Ken Whistler via Unicode wrote: Asmus, On 12/5/2017 12:35 PM, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote: I don't know the history of this particular "unification" Here are some clues to guide further research on the history. The annotation in question was added to a draft of the NamesList.txt file for Unicode 4.1 on October 7, 2003. The annotation was not yet in the Unicode 4.0 charts, published in April, 2003. That should narrow down the search for everybody. I can't find specific mention of this in the UTC minutes from the relevant 2003 window. But I strongly suspect that the catalyst for the change was the discussion that took place regarding PRI #12 re terminal punctuation: http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-12.html That document, at least, does mention "Armenian" and U+2024, although not in the same breath. That PRI was discussed and closed at UTC #96, on August 25, 2003: http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2003/03240.htm I don't find any particular mention of U+2024 in my own notes from that meeting, so I suspect the proximal cause for the change to the annotation for U+2024 on October 7 will have to be dug out of an email archive at some point. --Ken Thanks, Ken. Looking in the e-mail trail I find relevant that the concerns raised here were present already in 2003. John Cowan scripsit: (emphasis added) Of course with proportional fonts this character would display at least (and preferably) a single dot. Any use of this character that assumes it is a symbol consisting in a single dot aligned on the baseline seems to abuse the semantic of this character, which is not a punctuation, but really a styling character used instead of an "invisible" thin space. The larger concern was that implementations should be free to implement strings of leader characters in a way that makes sense for the intended purpose and is not constrained by the design constraints for other, utterly unrelated use. In particular, he likened the leader characters to "styled whitespace". In the early years there was much emphasis placed on unifying punctuation marks based on similarity of appearance, sometimes even ignoring the non-ink part of the design (e.g. side bearings, even asymmetric ones). More recently, the UTC seems to have shifted towards a stance of moving away from this towards a more nuanced approach. I believe there's a potential that the unification with the Armenian punctuation is not as well-considered as it may have appeared in 2003 and that it might better fit the current approach to construe the properties of the leader characters to be confined to their intended purpose more exclusively. A./