"Andrei Alexandrescu" <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote in message news:igoqrm$1n5r$1...@digitalmars.com... > On 1/13/11 10:26 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote: > [snip] >> [ 'f', {u with the umlaut}, 'n', 'f' ] >> >> Or: >> >> [ 'f', 'u', {umlaut combining character}, 'n', 'f' ] >> >> Those *both* get rendered exactly the same, and both represent the same >> four-letter sequence. In the second example, the 'u' and the {umlaut >> combining character} combine to form one grapheme. The f's and n's just >> happen to be single-code-point graphemes. >> >> Note that while some characters exist in pre-combined form (such as the >> {u >> with the umlaut} above), legend has it there are others than can only be >> represented using a combining character. >> >> It's also my understanding, though I'm not certain, that sometimes >> multiple >> combining characters can be used together on the same "root" character. > > Thanks. One further question is: in the above example with u-with-umlaut, > there is one code point that corresponds to the entire combination. Are > there combinations that do not have a unique code point? >
My understanding is "yes". At least that's what I've heard, and I've never heard any claims of "no". I don't know of any specific ones offhand, though. Actually, it might be possible to use any combining character with any old letter or number (like maybe a 7 with an umlaut), though I'm not certain. FWIW, the Wikipedia article might help, or at least link to other things that might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_character Michel or spir might have better links though.
