However, having said all this, I'm not sure it's a Unicode issue.
What is to prevent font makers from creating fonts with glyphs that
look like ˇ for every caron? The Unicode Consortium doesn't force
the appearance of glyphs, only the font makers do.
Chapter 7 of the Unicode standard (http://unicode.org/book/ch07.pdf) is reasonably good at not being descriptive and not prescriptive in this matter:
<< When Czech is printed in books, U+010F LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CARON and U+0165 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CARON letter forms with apostrophe are often used instead of letter forms with caron (hacek) over the base forms. In Slovak, this use also applies to U+013E LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CARON. The use of an apostrophe can avoid some line crashes over the ascenders of those letters and so result in better typography. In typewritten or handwritten documents, or in didadactic and pegagogical material, on the other hand, letter forms with haceks are preferred. Languages other than Czech or Slovak that make use of these characters may simply choose to always use the forms with haceks. >>
The last sentence alone strikes a wrong note. We have been told that "letter forms with apostophe" are "often" used in Czech, which indicates by necessity that letter forms with hacek are also used in Czech, just somewhat less often.
Accordingly the last sentence should read something like:
<< It is not improper in any language that make use of these characters to simply choose to always use the forms with haceks. >>
This would also avoid the oddity of suggesting that the languages themselves may choose.
Of course no matter what one says about what is proper or what is "preferred", someone is likely to be found who will dispute it.
Jim Allan
