Marco Cimarosti scripsit: > It has been repeated a lot of times that no more precomposed character will > never ever ever ever be added. But now I see from > http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U40-2100.pdf that the following new > character will be added in 4.0: > > - code: U+213B > - name: FACSIMILE SIGN > - compatibility decomposition: U+0046 U+0041 U+0058 > - translation in plain English: a character to encode the word "FAX", in all > capitals.
In fact, adding new compatibility decompositions is no problem, because compatibility characters are decomposed but never recomposed. If Q WITH CIRCUMFLEX were added (without putting it into the normalization exceptions list), it would create an incompatibility, because 3.0 normalization would leave Q + COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX alone, whereas 4.x normalization would recompose it to Q WITH CIRCUMFLEX. But no normalization will ever recompose F + A + X to FACSIMILE SIGN. It's true that a NFKx 4.0 normalization will take this character apart, whereas in 3.x it would have been left alone. But that is no problem: 3.x processes are not guaranteed to do the Right Thing with respect to characters not yet defined! -- One art / There is John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> No less / No more http://www.reutershealth.com All things / To do http://www.ccil.org/~cowan With sparks / Galore -- Douglas Hofstadter
